Toxic
by Genii
Summary: FINALLY FINISHED! ! It was only after I had been broken up with him for almost two months that I realized my ex-boyfriend sang in his sleep. [the love child of dakki and saturday.]
1. Prologue

**Author's Note:** Aha, I see you have stumbled upon our masterpiece!! ((cackles)) This fanfic is not the work of one evil genius, but two evil genii-- that is to say, Dakki and Saturday. This is Saturday speaking at the moment, for our beloved Dakki is currently regaling our boys with Amazing True Tales of the Wilderness from her recent camping trip to Alaska. (And no, that is not a coincidence.)

DAKKI: ((points to a small gray speck on her mantel)) See that, boys? How'd you like to see that coming at you, teeth bared and mouth foaming, a murderous look in its yellow eyes?

DALTON: Dakki, that's lint.

DAKKI: Oh.

**Disclaimer:** We own absolutely nothing, except Racetrack's slippers, which belong to Dakki, and Jack's _gratuitously _tight sweatpants, which belong to Saturday.

**Prologue.**

It was only after I had been broken up with him for almost two months that I realized my ex-boyfriend sang in his sleep.

It wouldn't have disturbed me quite so much if he had been singing good music. I'm all for a little Led Zeppelin in the middle of the night, and Talking Heads wouldn't have been too bad, either. But he wasn't singing any of that. No, at three o'clock in the morning I awoke to the melodious sound of Spot Conlon singing Britney fucking Spears. Holy shit...

Racetrack rolled over in his plaid sleeping bag and glared at Spot's sleeping form. "Should I throw something at him?" he asked me, smirking.

"Definitely."

"Got any heavy, pointy objects on you?"

"None that I can think of."

Race ran a hand through his hair. "Damn."

Allow me to set the scene. I, Jack Kelly, along with a few of my closest college companions (ooh, tongue-twister!) were on a camping trip in northern Alaska. I know it sounds ridiculous and dangerous and rather pathetic, but... Well, that's why we wanted to go. We decided it would be a bonding experience for us—Racetrack, David, Bumlets, Swifty, and me—before fall semester at Boston University started in a few weeks, and we were all back to studying premed and prevet and preslacker and (in Racetrack's case) "Early Design and Production of Eighteenth-Century Prussian Doilies", which had ended up being his declared major, although he had absolutely no idea how.

We had been all set to fly up for three weeks of male bonding and fishing and building fires and whatever else you were supposed to do when you went camping. And then Spot invited himself along, and it all went to hell.

My ex-boyfriend's off-key rendition of "Toxic" was beginning to wake up more of the guys. Swifty snuggled down deeper into his sleeping bag, grumbling, and Bumlets quietly started to sing along through his pillow. David, however, remained an immobile lump in the sleeping ban next to Racetrack's, his snoring gentle and unbroken. I was incredibly jealous that he was able to sleep through this.

"…Too high, I can't come down, losin' my head, spinnin' round and round…"

Racetrack was still glowering at the back of Spot's head, barely visible over the edge of the Brooklynite's hot pink sleeping bag. "All right, someone has to put a stop to the madness," he said to me. "I vote we draw straws and the loser has to go and poke him awake."

"Don't bother, I'll do it," I murmured, yawning and getting up.

"I'm addicted to you, don't you know that you're toxic?" sang Spot hazily.

I was beginning to regret my offer to wake Spot up -- I was sure that he would react strangely when pulled from his Britney fantasies. "Hey, Spot," I whispered, nudging him in the ribs. "Spot, wake up!"

He did. "Cowboy, has anyone ever told you that you look amazing with no shirt on?"

"Yeah," I answered offhandedly. "You were singing 'Toxic', Spot, and you woke everyone up. You're mental. Go to sleep."

"I like those pants on you," Spot remarked, looking me over.

"You're _mental_," I repeated, panicking slightly and trying to cover up my rather tight sweatpants with my hands.

"You're sexy."

"AHH!" I ran both hands through my hair. "Spot, we broke up two months ago, and you're not allowed to call me sexy anymore. GO TO SLEEP."

And he did.

But he blew a kiss at me first.

Barely anyone got any sleep that night. Spot would sleep for about fifteen minutes before starting to sing something else, and then somebody would wake him up and tell him to be quiet, and then the whole thing would start over again. Everyone took it in shifts, except for David, who was fast asleep the whole time, and only woke up at around seven, looking as innocent as a sixth-grader in the Superman pajamas that brought out the blue in his eyes.

Not that I was looking at his eyes or anything...

Racetrack once said that a person's personality can pretty much be summed up by what they slept in. At the time I didn't really think much of it, but now that we were all gathered around the campfire in our pajamas, glaring at Spot over our mugs of instant coffee crystals, made with authentic Milkman powdered milk and non-dairy hazelnut flavoring, it suddenly made a lot of sense. Spot, despite the cold, had on nothing put a pair of black silk boxers. Bumlets was wearing a West Coast Dance Explosion T-shirt and some pink legwarmers, which he claimed used to belong to his sister; Swifty was wearing a bathrobe he had stolen from the Chicago Hilton. And Racetrack, of course, in addition to his plaid pajamas, had on an enormous pair of pink fluffy bunny slippers, which were currently doing a lot to jeopardize his position as the only straight guy on the camping trip.

"I can't believe he's had those since freshman year, and I never even heard about it," Swifty murmured, shaking his head. "Jack, why didn't you tell me?"

"Roommate's code," Race answered for me, as he spooned something white and gooey onto everyone's plates.

I recited with him: "Observed since the time of the Romans, it has only three clauses—One: Thou shalt not steal from thine roommate. Two: Thou shalt not draw humorous designs on thine roommate's face with a red sharpie when thine roommate is passed out in the hall. Three: Thou shalt not tell thine friends about thine roommates pink fuzzy bunny slippers."

"Really?" David asked, curious. "There's actually a roommate's code?"

"No. I lied." Race propped his bunny slippered-feet up on a stump and dug into his breakfast. "And I'm sorry to say that Jack has already broken the first two clauses, so he is failing miserably as an acceptable roommate."

I resisted the urge to fling him some of the gooey substance I had just been served, worried that it would attach to his skin and begin to suck the life out of him. I decided that sticking out my tongue would be hostile enough, and he returned the favor with a grin.

"So, uh, Race…" Bumlets began, pushing his food around on the plate, not quite trusting it enough to take a bite. "What…what exactly are we eating here?"

"Denver omelet mix," Racetrack said. "They used to give it to the marines as punishment." **[A/N: Ten points and a strawberry lifesaver to whoever can name the movie that line came from.]**

"Race, we've only been here for two days. Don't we have any fresh food?"

"Well…" Race admitted, "Yes. And we would have eggs, if Spot hadn't insisted on trying to juggle them yesterday morning. But don't you love camp food? We got dehydrated stroganoff, dehydrated ravioli, dehydrated chicken soup, dehydrated lasagna, dehydrated raisins…"

"Aren't raisins already dehydrated?" David asked, poking at his omelet mix.

"Yeah, but with these ones, they dehydrate 'em again. They're, like, the size of a grain of sand. It's fantastic."

Racetrack, as you might have already figured out, was a little camping crazy. But then, I guess that's to be expected of someone who grew up in Lower Manhattan and considered New Jersey to be the great outdoors. I grew up on a farm just outside Provo, Utah, with nine older brothers and a bunch of Mormons for company, and I spent more nights per year sleeping in a tent than I did inside. None of this was new to me; all I wanted was real eggs for breakfast.

"So," Spot said, tugging at the waistband of his silken boxers, "I was wondering, did anyone hear a strange noise last night?"

He walked right into that one. Everyone glared at him with renewed hate, except David, who was busy sprinkling dehydrated raisins on his omelet and didn't take any notice.

"What?" Spot asked innocently.

"Is it possible to drown oneself in half a quart of instant coffee?" I asked to nobody in particular, looking down at my mug and wondering how the hell Spot and I had managed to go out for over a year.

"That would be nice," said Swifty.

And so began the unusual misadventures of five teenage boys and one potentially hermaphroditical Brooklynite in the wondrous land of Alaska. Little did we know the dangers that awaited us as we sat there around the campfire, eating omelets which tasted suspiciously like day-old manure and half-listening to Racetrack's lecture on how incredibly useful knowledge of eighteenth-century Prussian doilies could be later in life. The only thing I was concerned about at the moment was how Spot was eyeing my bare chest in a very suggestive manner, but things were going to be changing very soon.

Especially Spot, out of those silk pajamas. I only hoped he wouldn't take out his red feather boa for warmth...

**Author's Note:** There you have it. Reviews are greatly appreciated, as is constructive criticism (because we're open minded young women, we are!). You may have some trouble from the preppie-muse faction, but that's just to be expected.

-Saturday and Dakki


	2. Chapter One

Author's Note: SATURDAY: Dakki's sick.

DAKKI: ((nods fervently))

SATURDAY: But she wrote anyway, which is why she rocks beyond belief.

DAKKI: ((blows nose))

Disclaimer: We own nothing except Racetrack's watch, which belongs to Dakki, and Spot's M.A.C _Mocha_ lip gloss, which belongs to Saturday.

.o.

Chapter One — Free Willies

.o.

By the third day, Spot couldn't take it anymore. He was more or less okay with not being able to access his email or call any of his friends back home, and even the fact that he had to ration his hair gel to two tablespoons a day didn't bother him as much as I thought it would. But there was one thing that he couldn't survive without, and when it got to be too much, he climbed into Swifty's truck, connected his laptop to the cigarette lighter, and ordered everyone inside.

"Come on," he said, slipping the DVD out of its case and popping it into the computer. "We need Kate and Leo."

"What happens if he goes for more than a week without seeing _Titanic_?" Racetrack muttered to me as we were smushed into the backseat.

"He dies."

And yet, no matter how much we all claimed to hate it, we were still utterly hypnotized as we watched the movie unfold. I really can't tell you how many times I've seen _Titanic_ with Spot, and you probably wouldn't want to know. In fact, our entire relationship was, in a way, based on the movie: we watched it on our very first date at the beginning of Sophomore year, at a little revival theater on Brattle street that Spot had lured me into by saying they were having an all-night 'Twin Peaks' marathon, and then proceeded to cry the entire way through and blow his nose on my shirt. By the time the credits rolled, I was head-over-heels in love with him. And don't even ask me why.

Anyway, even now, I still secretly liked the movie. We all watched, rapt (except for Swifty and Bumlets, who had escaped to do things I didn't really want to think about, and Spot, who kept trying to stick his hand down my pants every ten seconds but still managed to pay attention to the screen) until the credits rolled, at which point Racetrack sighed in an I-have-something-important-to-say kind of way, and began to speak.

"Today," Racetrack announced dramatically, "we go hiking."

The reaction was not quite what he had been hoping for; Spot was messing around with the Special Features on his DVD, David was watching the screen, and I was pretending not to watch David. Bumlets and Swifty were nowhere to be seen, but there were very suspicious noises coming from the tent, which we were all trying very hard to ignore.

Race cleared his throat significantly and repeated a little louder, "Today, we go HIKING."

I nodded without taking my eyes off of David, David said "Okay" without taking his eyes off the screen, and Spot said "Sure thing, hon" and glanced back at Race for a second. And did a double-take.

I tore my eyes from David's incredible profile and glanced at Race too, immediately wishing I hadn't. Y'know how I said he was a complete camping fanatic? That was an understatement. Yes, my little Italian friend was decked out in everything from a Camelback to a huge sun hat to enormous waterproof pants that made him look about 90 pounds heavier. Holy shit.

I whistled. "And I was wondering how you managed to pack three more duffel bags than Spot..." I chuckled, looking him over.

"I can't say I've ever seen hiking boots of that nature," David remarked.

"Dear God, does all of your footwear feature fuzzy pink bunnies?" demanded Spot.

Racetrack flashed that wide, white smile of his and modeled the outfit for us, looking like Spot on prom night. "I feel pretty!" he sang. "Oh so pr—"

"And you call yourself a straight man." Spot tutted loudly, but he was looking very turned-on.

"I am," said Race indignantly.

"He talks like a parrot!"

"Stop with the 'West Side Story' references!"

"ALL RIGHT, EVERYBODY OUTTA THE CAR!" Race reached forward and closed Spot's laptop. "Ow — shit, Spot, didja have to bite me? Get away!! AHH! Anyway, I've got 38 Coppertone Sunscreen for David's sensitive skin. Who's gonna put it on 'im?"

Naturally, I volunteered.

"And I," Spot declared importantly, "am going to break up the little love-fest in our sleeping quarters. That sex area has already been claimed by me and my boyfriend." He winked at me, made an obscene and very disturbing tongue gesture, and marched off happily, leaving me irritated beyond words.

Race stared after him for a minute, eyebrows raised, and then handed me a little bottle. "Put this on Dave and make sure you don't miss any places -- extra on his nose, all right?"

"Thanks, mom."

"Shut up, David."

"Hey Race, where can I get a sunhat like that? Very sexy."

Racetrack shot me a withering look that said quite clearly, "I am using all of my self-control to restrain myself from kicking you in the nuts" and straightened his hat. "I'm going to go and make sure the trail mix hasn't been attacked by ants," he said, and he left with a flourish.

David grinned and tried to take the bottle from me. "It's all right, Jack, I can do my own sunscreen," he said with a grin.

"No!" I yelped.

He raised an eyebrow. "Why...?"

I couldn't think of a plausible answer to his unfinished question, so I bent my head low so that my baseball cap would cover my bright red face and began to squeeze out sunscreen into the palm of my hand. "I can't believe Spot still thinks we're going out," I said to fill in the awkward silence.

"Yeah. Does he have, like, separation issues or something?"

"I think so." I dipped my finger in the blob of sunscreen. "He didn't even write depressing, homosexual poetry when we broke up. He just ... didn't notice."

David laughed. I lifted my face so that I could smear the gunky lotion onto his body, and for a few seconds I found breathing almost impossible -- it had just occurred to me how difficult it was going to be to pull this off without getting a huge erection. Slowly, with a trembling hand, I reached forward and spread sunscreen down his nose and over his cheekbones.

Gaaaaaaah...

It was as though a huge electrical shock had bolted through my body, starting from my fingertip and shooting up my arm and throughout the rest of my body. I gasped slightly and glanced at David, to see if he had felt it too.

He hadn't, apparently, because he was humming quietly and staring off into space. "You deal with it very well," he said after a minute. "Spot, I mean. If that were happening to me, I'd be having severe issues getting any sleep at night."

"I do have severe issues getting to sleep at night," I mumbled.

"What?"

Our conversation was interrupted by a muffled yell coming from the tent. "SPOT!" Swifty was hollering. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?? I DON'T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU!! GET THE HELL OUTTA MY SLEEPING BAG!"

There was a thump and a yelp, and suddenly a very scared and very almost-naked Bumlets toppled out of the tent. "DON'T WORRY, SWIFTY, I'LL SAVE YOU!" he shouted dramatically, and he flipped his hair back out of his eyes and dived headlong back into the tent.

"I'M BEING RAPED!" Swifty shrieked.

"I'M SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED!" Spot yelled.

"SHUT UP AND GET AWAY FROM MY BOYFRIEND!" Bumlets roared, and soon it was Spot toppling out of the tent. He frowned, dusted himself off, and blew a raspberry at the tent. "Yeah, and don't come back," said Bumlets from inside.

I looked at David. "Maybe we can lose Spot in the woods today, eh?"

"Let's pray," David said seriously, and smeared a blob of sunscreen on my nose.

.o.

The hiking experience was not exactly what I had wished for. What I had been hoping would happen was that we would go on a very short hike, one that didn't involve me panting like a dog, and climp up onto a cliff or something, and then lie down in the sun. And then, while Bumlets and Swifty were busy making out, and Race was checking the barometer built into his MountainMan3000 all-weather, all-pressure, omni-stabilized multi-purpose wristwatch complete with can opener, dental drill, laser pointer, and miniature popcorn popper as well as twenty-six additional features necessary for survival in the wild (available for only eight hundred dollars legal tender in black, stainless steel, or midnight chartreuse), David and I would lie down on the tundra, and look up at the sky together, and talk, for hours and hours. And then, David might take his shirt off, and after a while his (beautiful, freckled) fair skin would start to burn a little from the hot Alaskan sun, and I would get some more sunscreen from the dispenser on Racetrack's watch, and rub in into his warm back.

And as we watched the sun set behind Mount McKinley, David would say, "It's so beautiful."

And I would say, "No. You are." And then we would kiss. A small, perfect kiss. A guy can dream.

Well, you may have already guessed that the hike didn't exactly go that way.

Racetrack was, as he said, serious about camping. I liked to say that he was a fanatic, but he preferred his own terminology. And people who were serious about camping were serious about hiking too, and those people, apparently, went on fourteen-mile round trips up hills, through eight hundred blackberry bushes to a glacier-fed stream called Moose Creek.

"It'll be fantastic," Racetrack said. "Anyone want beef jerky?"

"Race...have you ever walked fourteen miles in you life? Have you even walked four?"

"No, but it can't be that hard," he said lightly. "Gatorade?"

"No, I..." I paused, and looked over Racetrack's shoulder at the map of Denali National Park that he had unfolded. "Race, tell me how you chose this hike?"

Race shrugged. "The guy at the park entrance recommended it."

"Really?" I asked. "Really, the guy at the park entrance recommended a fourteen-mile uphill hike to six college students, five of whom have never hiked before and considered AM/PM to be the great outdoors? He recommended it, Race?"

"Well..." Racetrack ran a hand through his hair, considering. "...Maybe 'recommended' is too strong a word? Let's put it this way, he said there were five categories for hikes: 'Relaxed', 'Intermediate', 'Challenging', 'Strenuous', and 'Bury My Heart at Denali National Park'." He paused. "...I took a chance."

It wouldn't have actually been that bad if I could have gotten close to David, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Instead, Spot took the opportunity to spend the entire hike up the hill hanging off of me with his arm around my neck, asking me to point out wildlife on the trail.

"What's that?" he asked, leaning so close to me that I was afraid he was going to start chewing on my earlobe again like he had for most of Mile Number 3, and pointing to a birch up ahead that was identical to eight thousand other birches next to it.

"That's a tree," I said. "Some kind of very tall tree." I hoped I wasn't being too technical.

"Oh, it's wonderful how you know so much about the great outdoors," Spot breathed.

"Tell me, Jack, back home in Colorado—"

"Utah."

"What?"

I sighed. "I grew up in Utah, Spot."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Pretty sure."

He shrugged. "Well, whatever. But, back home in Utah, Jack...did your family have a farm?" He smiled lasciviously and licked his lips.

"NO," I said, quickly. I had a pretty good idea where this conversation was going.

"'Cause, I have to say," Spot murmured, "the idea of seeing you do farm work gets me pretty hot. I mean, if you can look so sexy just sitting in the library, studying Griswold Vs. Connecticut..." he paused, smiling, and tried to make eye contact. "Wanna hear a secret of mine?"

"Not really," I said.

"I have this fantasy," he said, "about you baling hay in a barn--you're wearing these faded blue jeans and cowboy boots, and you're all sweaty, and hot, and..."

"And you come outside and offer me lemonade?" I said irritably.

"How did you know?" Spot squealed. "Anyway," he said, "whaddaya say we slip off into the woods, and...y'know...get to know each other all over again." He raised his eyebrows suggestively and put his hand on my ass. "Ooh. Boxers."

"SPOT!" I screamed. "I DON'T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU! WE'VE BEEN BROKEN UP FOR TWO MONTHS!" I jumped away from him, but not fast enough to avoid him licking my neck. Or quietly enough to avoid David looking back to see what was going on. Goddammit.

"Are you wearing those shorts I got you for Christmas last year?" he asked, oblivious. "The ones with the Grinch on them?"

"SPOT, DO YOU UNDERSTAND A WORD OF WHAT I'M SAYING?"

"You don't have to yell," he pouted.

"I'M NOT YELLING!" I yelled.

"Y'know, Jack..." Spot said. "I know we're broken up and everything, if that's what you're worried about."

"I—you do?" I asked.

"Sure," he said. "But just because we've broken up, that doesn't mean we can't still go out, does it?"

"Well, it does actually, that's what breaking up is." 1

"But...we can still have sex, right?"

Before I could come up with a good answer to this irrevocably skewed bit of logic (or begin to seriously contemplate hurling myself headlong into a bush of poison oak) I heard Racetrack shouting from a few yards ahead.

"WOOHOO! WE MADE IT! I'M A REAL PIONEER NOW! Hey, Bumlets, take a picture of me next to this tree?"

"Sorry, Race, I forgot my camera."

"Oh, that's okay. There's one in my watch. See?" He pointed to his wrist. "Between the MP3 player and the calculator."

"This one?"

"No, below it. That one does spreadsheets."

I jogged up to the front, where everyone but Spot and I had been walking. All I could see ahead of us was a tangle of blackberries. "Jesus, Race, how do you even know we're there? I don't see a creek."

"Oh, it's just through those bushes."

"You can see over them?" I marveled.

"No. It's on the GPS on my watch."

Before I could say anything else, a hot pink streak shot past us, towards the stream. "LET'S GO SKINNY DIPPING!" our Brooklynite friend shouted, as he disappeared from view. A pair of pink rubber briefs sailed through the air in his wake, and landed on my head. "WHEE!! FREE WILLIES! JACK, COME AND—AAAUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!"

"...And that would be the blackberry bushes," said Race with a smirk.

It came as no surprise to the rest of the guys when I tried my very hardest to convince them to leave Spot there for the rest of the afternoon. I bribed, I begged, I offered them my car, but in the end Racetrack reminded us all that Spot was the only one among us with any fashion sense whatsoever, so I gave in. I might need to borrow his M.A.C _Mocha_ lipgloss next week, anyway.

And so it was that we continued our hike, Racetrack leading (as always), Bumlets and Swifty closely behind (trying to be discreet about the fact that their hands were practically down each other's pants), David and me behind them (avoiding eye-contact at all costs), and Spot at the rear (carefully removing thorns from his formerly flawless, moon-kissed body). Conversation was pretty much limited to Racetrack's "And here we have the Chocolate Lily, or _Fritillaria camschatcensis_, named for the deep, chocolate-color of its petals" and the occasional giggle from Swifty, which only heightened the feeling of awkwardness in the air.

After a few minutes, I noticed that Spot's whimpers and grumbles behind me had pretty much stopped. Glancing back, I immediately realized why. Ohhhhhhhh shit.

"David," I whispered, poking him in the ribs. "Holy crap, David, where's Spot?"

"What?"

"Spot's _gone_."

David whipped around. "Oh god. RACE!"

Racetrack, who was in the middle of identifying a Wild Iris to the back of Bumlets' head, looked up, irritated, at the pair of us. "David, is this important?" he demanded.

"Yeah, it is! Sp—"

"Because I think that Bumlets and Swifty are really benefiting from my lecture, and I would hate to deprive them of such a learning experience," he went on airily. "Now the scientific term for the Wild Iris is _Iris setosa_, but—"

"RACE, SPOT'S MISSING!" I yelled.

Racetrack stopped. "Spot's... what?"

"Missing? Y'know, like, not here?" I clarified, looking desperately around for a sign of anything hot pink. It wasn't that I was concerned about Spot's well-being; I was more concerned for the rest of the world.

"He's on the _loose?!_"Race yelped."God save Alaska!"

I opened my mouth to respond, but I was cut off by a sudden noise echoing through the trees.

"You're just too good to be true... Can't take my eyes off of you..."

We all froze. "What the hell was _that_?" Swifty demanded, his hands still tightly gripping Bumlets' waist.

"You'd be like heaven to touch... I wanna hold you so much..." the voice continued breathily. The five of us looked around wildly, trying to find the source of the voice, but none of us saw anything. "At long last love has arrived, and I thank God I'm alive... You're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you..."

And suddenly I saw.

Standing on a ledge about twenty feet away, doing a sort of jazz-walk back and fourth and humming the background orchestrations, was none other than Spot Conlon, obviously wishing he was Heath Ledger. He stopped suddenly, stretched out his arms to me, and sang, "I LOVE YOU, BABY, AND IF IT'S QUITE ALL RIGHT, I NEED YOU, BABY, TO WARM THE LONELY NIGHT! I LOVE YOU, BABY, TRUST ME WHEN I SAY... OH PRETTY BABY, DON'T BRING ME DOWN, I PRAY! OH PRETTY BABY, NOW THAT I'VE FOUND YOU, STAY! AND LET ME LOVE YOU BABY... LET ME LOVE YOU..."

We stopped him before the key change, thankfully. I can honestly say that I have never been more mortified in my entire life, including the time that I pinched some random guy's ass whom I assumed to be Spot, but who turned out to be a very short, very built, and very homophobic stranger. This was ten times worse, and Spot was ten times more tone-deaf.

And do you know what the worst part was?

Hmm?

When we got home, Spot insisted that we pile back into the back of the van and watch "10 Things I Hate About You" on his laptop. It was really very lucky that Race, Swifty, Bumlets, and David were between Spot and me, because if I had been able to reach anywhere near Spot's neck... well, let's just say we wouldn't have to worry about any more Britney Spears keeping us awake at night.

Insert evil glare here.

.o.

That night, we all arranged our sleeping bags in a rather odd configuration on one side of the tent, so that Spot ended up alone on the other side. For the life of him he couldn't figure out why, but he realized that this way there would be more room when he lured me into his bed later on, so he wasn't too upset. He spent all of our dinner of dehydrated lasagna making disturbing tongue gestures and lifting up his shirt whenever someone tried to speak, so it went without saying that we were all pretty ticked off at him by the time we got into our sleeping bags.

We soon forgot our irritation, however, a few minutes after we had put out the campfire. Bumlets was singing us a complicated sort of Gaelic lullaby that he had learned in a gay chatroom last year, and we were all almost asleep — when a twig cracked outside.

Yeah, I know, I sound completely paranoid. I know it could have been a bird or a chipmunk or the police coming to take Spot away, but somehow, the way this twig cracked sounded like it was something much bigger.

And we freaked out.

"It's Bigfoot!"

"It's the Blair Witch!"

"It's a grizzly bear!"

"It's a deranged lumberjack!"

"It's Ricky Martin!" Spot shrieked, pulling the top of his hot-pink sleeping bag over his head. "He's back from the dead and he's out for revenge!"

"Spot," Swifty reminded him, "Ricky Martin isn't dead."

"When was the last time you head 'Livin' La Vida Loca'?" Spot asked defensively.

"In that gay bar in Cambridge you dragged us to the night before my phlebotomy exam."

"Oh yeah."

"Man," Racetrack said, "you sure were lucky one of those guys in furry hotpants used to be a cardiologist. If it weren't for that, I don't know how you ever would've passed."

We heard another twig snap outside our tent. "It's Enrique Iglesias!" Spot screamed, and shot back into his sleeping bag. It was going to be a very long night.

__

.o.

**Shoutouts** (written by Dakki this time, which doesn't mean that Saturday isn't grateful beyond belief to reviewers, but in order to get this done on time, one of us had to write it... And this is one kick-ass run-on sentence.)

**Erin Go Bragh:**

BUMLETS AND SWIFTY: YAY!

DAKKI: Thanks. They needed that. XD.

BUMLETS: Wanna go make out now?

SWIFTY: Okay!

DAKKI: ...But they'll always have each other... ((grins))

DALTON: ((upstairs)) Hey, why won't the bathroom door open? I—AAAAAHHHH! MY EYES! _MY EYES!_

**Madison Square:**

DAKKI: Camping is actually highly underrated. I mean, apart from the whole not-being-able-to-get-to-your-email-for-a-week-at-a-time-thinking-all-of-your-friends-have-forgotten-about-you-and-you'll-die-alone-in-the-jaws-of-a-Grizzly-bear-(you know, alone except for the grizzly bear)-thing, it ain't so bad. ((pause)) Remind me why I like it so much?

DALTON: Cute backpacking guys.

DAKKI: Oh yeah...

**Braids:**

DAKKI: ((attempts to curtsy and ends up falling flat on her face)) ((from the floor)) ...Thank you...

DALTON: ((preens)) ...We are great, aren't we?

DAKKI: ((trying very hard not to hurt his feelings)) ...Actually, Charlie, I think she means Saturday.

DALTON: FINE! I can see when I'm not wanted! ((runs off))

DAKKI: WAIT! I CAN'T GET UP IN THIS DRESS!

**Dreamer:**

DAKKI: Honestly, didn't you see it coming? Maybe a nice musician number on the Brooklyn docks...Spot gets out his glitter leotard...the newsies in wet long johns start to can-can…((starts to drool))

DALTON: ((stares))

WHAT?

**Sapphy:**

DAKKI: My fair Sapphinella, you underestimate us so. For are we simply fanfic authors?

DALTON: ...

DAKKI: FOR ARE WE SIMPLY FANFIC AUTHORS?

DALTON: ...

DAKKI: ((pokes))

DALTON: OH! ...No, we are not simply fanfic authors! We are...

DAKKI: CAPED CRUSADERS! Dun-dun-dunnn...and they're pink, too!

.o.

**Author's Note:** DAKKI and SATURDAY and DALTON: I love you, baby, and if it's quite all right...

DALTON and SATURDAY: ((stop singing suddenly and evilly))

DAKKI: I deedoo, baby, to keep be warb at dight!

DALTON and SATURDAY: ((snigger))

DAKKI: ((glares)) Shuddup, I'b god a stuffy dose.

DALTON: ((still sniggering)) Yeah, we noticed.

DAKKI: ((smacks him)) ((goes back to bed))

SATURDAY: And that is our first chapter. Please leave a review, and send flowers for Dakki because she's feeling pretty crappy. Dalton and I couldn't help making fun of her congested style of talking, but please be nice to her in her weakened condition. She's the real genius of the Genii. ;-)

-Saturday and Dakki


	3. Chapter Two

Author's Note: DAKKI: This is, officially, the Chapter of Insane Amounts of Indiana Jones References.

DALTON: It is also the Chapter of Insane Amounts of Copyright Infringement.

SATURDAY: And, for added fun, we've decided that the reviewer who identifies the most movie references wins…

((drumroll))

A Night on the Town with Charlie Dalton!

DALTON: ((flexes manly muscles and grins))

DAKKI: That's right, you, the reader, may win a night with Charlie Dalton! You'll dine at a five-star restaurant, ride around town in a limo, drink fine champagne, and party at the most exclusive clubs!

DALTON: ((coughs)) The club is called "Jack in the Box"…

DAKKI & SATURDAY: And now, on with the fic!

**Chapter Two--Calling Doctor Jones**  
  
"Now, listen to me when I say this, guys, 'cause it might just change your life: when you love someone--I mean really love someone--give them a potato. It's the only way to tell them how much you care."  
  
This titanic statement was not exactly met with the reaction Race had hoped for (applause, tears, and a nomination for the Nobel Prize) but rather four puzzled stares and a loud, unrelated coughing fit from Spot, who had choked on his freeze-dried ravioli as he tried to lick his lips suggestively, wink at me, and hum "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" all at the same time.  
  
"JACK! Save me!" he gasped, hurling himself toward me so I could give him the Heimlich maneuver, knocking me off my stump and sending both of us sprawling onto the ground, with him landing on top of me.  
  
"You know, Spot, if you can say 'Jack, save me,' I really don't think you need the Heimlich maneuver that badly," David remarked. I looked up at him with a weak expression and smiled gratefully.  
  
As suddenly as he had lunged at me, Spot jumped up. "Oh, I see how this is," he said, staring at David accusingly.  
  
"Finally," Swifty mumbled.  
  
"Davey, you want a piece of my hot body too, don't you?" Spot asked, angling his ass in his skintight leather pants towards David's face. David politely attempted not to throw up.  
  
"SPOT!" I shouted, horrified, at least partly because I was afraid David might actually develop a crush on him because of all this, and then I would probably have to kill myself by overdose of powdered milk substitute.  
  
"Well, it won't work," Spot said, going over to sit on my lap. Oh, Jesus. "I'm all Jack's. And you can't have me."  
  
"Gee, what a shame," David said sarcastically, and then--I almost could have sworn--he winked at me.  
  
"Hey, Davey, you okay?" Race asked.  
  
"Oh, yeah, I just got a gnat in my eye. Okay. It's out."  
  
Never mind.  
  
"So, what's this about potatoes?" Swifty asked at last, as Bumlets rubbed his back, Spot (still in my lap despite my best efforts) nibbled on my ear, and David concentrated very hard on his applesauce.  
  
"Well," Racetrack said, "I was just saying that a potato is the perfect gift for someone you love."  
  
"A potato?" Swifty said.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
He frowned. "Well…why?"  
  
"Okay, well," Race said, "look at it this way-what do people usually give to somebody they love? Roses, right?"  
  
"Yeah…"  
  
"But what do roses say? I mean, all they do is just sit in a vase and look pretty, and they get all brown and gross after a few days. So giving someone roses is like saying 'my love for you is temporary and based solely upon your appearance'."  
  
I thought about this a moment. Racetrack was always coming up with crackpot theories like this-the pajama thing, for one, or his belief that the Amish were, by increments, taking over the world-but this one actually made sense. Especially when I looked at it in light of the fact that a week after we broke up, Spot took it upon himself to send me ninety-nine red roses, and a singing telegram to perform "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" complete with choreography. In the middle of my history final.  
  
"Potatoes, though," Racetrack said, seeming more and more excited. "I mean, there are so many ways you can enjoy a potato! You can have mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, riced potatoes, whipped potatoes, fried potatoes, potato pancakes, potato skins, potato soup, French fries, home fries, hash browns, tater tots…I mean, you can even make a battery out of one-"  
  
"You can use one as a sex toy," Spot put in.  
  
"Um…"  
  
"You've been perfecting this theory for a long time, haven't you, Race?" I asked.  
  
"You can also make a battery out of a lemon," Davey said thoughtfully. "We did it in the second grade."  
  
"You can use that as a sex toy, too."  
  
"You had sex toys in the second grade?"  
  
"AS I WAS SAYING," Racetrack yelled. "So, you guys see my argument?"  
  
"Actually, in the second grade, I was-"  
  
"SHUT UP, SPOT!" everybody yelled.  
  
"Yeah," said Swifty, "actually, I can see your point."  
  
"Y'know, Race," Bumlets mused, "you may be onto something."  
  
"How would you use a potato as a sex toy?" David wondered.  
  
"Well, you-"  
  
"Okay, Spot, that's enough."  
  
And so the rest of the evening was spent discussing potatoes, how they were ugly but still really awesome, how they lasted forever and instead of dying just grew even more, and how David's mother had always used to make really great mashed potatoes every Tuesday night, and the secret was to use orange juice in them instead of milk, which we all agreed was just plain nasty.  
  
And, to this day, I'll have no idea how Spot did it: but when I went into my sleeping bag that night, it was filled, from top to bottom, with potatoes.  
  
.o.  
  
"Jesus," Race said, "how do you think he managed it? There have to be two hundred in there, at least."  
  
"I have no idea," I muttered.  
  
"I mean, I didn't even bring that many potatoes. Could he have…I don't know…grown them, or something?"  
  
"Do you wanna go get some breakfast?"  
  
"These look like russets."  
  
"I could really go for some coffee."  
  
"I read that russets don't even grow in Alaska…"  
  
"Are we out of Bisquick yet?"  
  
"HOW COULD HE FIND SO MANY POTATOES?" Racetrack collapsed to his knees and, out of sheer frustration, began to beat his head against the side of the tent, which didn't accomplish much, since tents, as we all know, are made of a thin, flexible fabric, and Racetrack has a pretty hard head.  
  
It was the morning after Racetrack's potato discourse, and we had all had an interesting night. It had taken me over an hour to get out all the potatoes Spot had put in my sleeping bag; the worst part was that he hadn't even admitted it, just sat there innocently shuffling Racetrack's pack of cards and trying to get someone to play strip spoons with him. Swifty and Bumlets had stayed awake for a long time whispering sweet nothings to each other about curly fries, in between making out. And then, just when everyone had pretty much gone to sleep, it started to rain. (It was actually more like a flash flood, but I don't want to get too technical.)   
  
We learned something important that night: there's a reason they tell you not to pitch your tent on an incline. Somewhere after midnight, we all woke up to find out sleeping bags drenched and our tent submerged in six inches of water. Interestingly enough, Spot was sleep-singing "My Heart Will Go On".  
  
Swifty solved the problem when he cut a hole in the south side of the tent for all the water to run out of, but needless to say, no one slept very well after that. Instead, we lay awake in the dark while Racetrack told us about the doily collection of Catherine the Great, which was more interesting than anyone would have liked to admit. Now it was morning, and everyone, although much more enlightened on the subject of doilies, was in a pretty bad mood.  
  
"Um, Race?" David said. "Are you sure you can make coffee out of potatoes?"  
  
"You can make anything out of potatoes," Racetrack said, strangely dignified for someone who was wearing pink bunny jammies with feet. (Earlier that morning Swifty had remarked that Race looked like Buster Baxter on crack, at which point Racetrack had beamed and skipped off to brush his teeth. There are twenty-seven thousand students at BU, and I got roomed with the only one who watches "Arthur" on a regular basis.)  
  
"Look, Race," David said, pulling his plate away before Racetrack could serve him any more potato waffles, "I can see how some of this stuff might work. Potato pancakes, sure. My family eats those all the time. But…potato flakes?"  
  
"That's what they eat in Ireland instead of Raisin Bran," Race said authoritatively. "Every morning. They make everything out of potatoes."  
  
"How would you know?"  
  
"I'm Irish."  
  
"You're Italian!"  
  
"Only partly," he muttered.  
  
"Race," I said, cutting in as I attempted to save Davey from Race's twisted brand of logic, "you are Italian. Your entire family lives in Little Italy. Your sister's name is Giovanna. You played Tony in the school production West Side Story-"  
  
"Really?" Spot said, suddenly looking at Racetrack with a little more interest.  
  
"Yeah," I said. "He still sings 'Somewhere' in the shower sometimes."  
  
"Maybe you could sing it to me sometime," Spot said seductively, licking his lips and gazing at Racetrack, who fell backwards out of his chair.  
  
"I can't believe you told him that," he hissed, standing back up and handing me a plate of potato waffles that had fallen on his head. "Now Spot'll be hitting on me all day."  
  
"Sorry," I said.  
  
"You don't sound sorry."  
  
"Well, y'know, I'm not, really." I grinned, and cut a bite of potato waffle. Before I could eat it, though, Racetrack grabbed hold of my wrist and glared at me.  
  
"If you don't get Spot to leave me alone," he said, "I will tell everyone that for an entire year when you were eight you were convinced that your parents had stolen you and you were actually a member of the Power Rangers."  
  
I stared at him pleadingly. "Oh, God, Race, please-"  
  
"And that you would only answer to 'Blue Ranger' and refused to be called Francis." He paused. "I'll also tell you that your real name is Francis."  
  
"Don't. Call me. Francis." I said through gritted teeth.  
  
"I will if you don't do something soon," he said. He could be pretty scary for someone who had a big fluffy tail on his backside.  
  
I buried my head in my hands. There was no way that Davey could find out about that. Nothing else really mattered. Taking a deep breath, I leapt up, began to do what Racetrack called my Interpretive Cowboy Dance, and sang at the top of my lungs:  
  
"KISS ME TOO FIIIIIIEEEEERRRRCELY, HOLD ME TOO TIIIIIIIIIIGHT! I need help believing you-ou're with me, to-o-night…my wildest dreaming could not foresee, lying beside you, with you wanting MEEEEEEEEEE! AND JUST FOR THIS MOMENT! AS LONG AS YOU'RE MINE! I'VE LOST ALL RESISTANCE! AND CROSSED SOME BORDERLINE…"  
  
It wasn't as bad as I'd thought. I actually have a decent voice - I played Marcellus Washburn in the tenth grade school production of "The Music Man", another thing I never wanted anyone but Racetrack to find out about - and only Swifty laughed hard enough to choke on one of the waffles that he had stolen from my plate. Everyone else managed to stay upright, and David politely stifled his laughter, while Spot just stared at me with eyes the size of saucers the entire time, practically purring.  
  
Happy, I sat down on my stump, and was just tossing some potato waffle into my mouth, when suddenly Racetrack reached out a hand and grabbed it from midair.  
  
"Bad waffles," he said, and pointed gravely to the ground beside me. I looked down, startled, to see Swifty collapsed on the grass, Bumlets already beside him, trying to shake him awake.  
  
.o.  
  
Spot had poisoned the waffles, of course. It didn't take long for us to figure that one out: almost as soon as Swifty hit the ground, Spot stomped off to the tent shouting something about how I was supposed to get those waffles so he could drag me off and have with way with me, and it would have worked, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids. As punishment, Racetrack sent him to time-out for the rest of the morning and put him on cooking detail for the duration of the trip. Swifty woke up with a bad headache after about fifteen minutes, and Bumlets had a lot of fun pretending to be a wartime nurse and quoting from "Pearl Harbor", while Swifty lay in the tent drinking Milo through a twisty straw. It was the most peaceful morning we'd had since we'd arrived.

That was, of course, until Swifty started whining about how he hurt all over. Wherever Bumlets tried to help, his boyfriend would cry, "No! It hurts!" and begin to whimper sadly.

"What about here?" Bumlets tried tentatively.

"That hurts too!"

Bumlets sighed in exasperation and sat back on his heels. "Well dammit, Swifty, where _doesn't_ it hurt?"

Swifty thought for a moment, then pointed to his elbow. "HERE," he said poutily.

Bumlets slowly leaned forward and kissed his elbow.

Swifty paused, and then a small smile spread across his face. "Here," he said, pointing to his forehead. Bumlets kissed his forehead, too.

I'm sure you can guess what happened after Swifty announced that his lips were not hurting at all in the slightest. Let's just say that none of us dared to go back into the tent until we absolutely had to, and Spot insisted on holding his breath in order to avoid inhaling radioactive material. It was very interesting.

That afternoon, though, Racetrack decided to shake things up, and force us to go on a sort of mini-hike to take photographs of Alaska's wildlife with his special Kyocera Finecam M410R. He wanted to be able to have full-color illustrations when he wrote his memoirs, so he was obsessed with photographing absolutely everything that happened to him wherever he went.  
  
"Come on, guys! A-photographing we go!" he yelled, sort of prancing out of the tent with all his equipment.  
  
"Why?" I asked without looking up.  
  
Racetrack smiled at me from under the rim of his hat. "Fortune and glory, Jack. Fortune and glory."  
  
"I'm seriously beginning to grow concerned about your mental health, Race, did you know that?" said Bumlets from where he was trying to teach Swifty and David how to do a complicated series of ballet moves in a patch of scrubby grass.  
  
"Why's that?" Race asked idly, adjusting the lens of his camera.  
  
"Because your fedora has pink bunny ears coming out of the top. That's just wrong, dude."  
  
At which point Spot tried not to look turned-on and ended up tripping over a shrubbery. He still had yet to get over the idea of Racetrack as Tony.  
  
I must say that watching David do ballet was quite possibly the hottest thing I'd seen in a very long time. His face was scrunched up in concentration and his tongue was poking out of the corner of his mouth as he watched Bumlets swing his legs around at impossible angles. Every so often a little curly piece of hair would fall in front of his eyes, and he would flick it away impatiently and give a little sigh of frustration. Holy crap, that man was sexy...  
  
Racetrack waved a hand in front of my face. "Hell-ooo, Jacky-boy-"  
  
"HEY! That's my nickname for him!"  
  
"Sorry, Spot."  
  
"Yeah, you should be. He's MINE."  
  
"Whatever..." Race adjusted his fedora impatiently, his fingers hovering over the camera around his neck as if he were itching to plan out his memoir. "C'mon, guys, we have to go before the sun goes down!"  
  
David, pausing in the middle of an arabesque, glanced at his watch. "The sun doesn't go down for another five hours, Race," he said skeptically.  
  
Race grinned. "My memoir's gonna be pretty fucking long, buddy."  
  
It was in this way that the four of us found ourselves being dragged into the wilderness yet again by a fanatical Racetrack. Yeah, I know, the guy's small-but when he gets going, there's no stopping him. It's positively terrifying.  
  
"So where to, Race?" asked Swifty.  
  
Racetrack, who was kneeling down to take a picture of a couple of owl droppings, didn't answer. Bumlets shrugged and pulled a map from his backpack. "You want pictures of wildlife?" he said slowly.  
  
"Yep," said Race distractedly.  
  
"Well then we should probably take this route, 'cause it leads right through the center of the woods and it looks wild."  
  
"It looks wild?" Race lifted an eyebrow.  
  
"Shut up, Mr. Bunny Fedora."  
  
It was in this way that we ended up spending two and a half hours in the middle of nowhere, yawning and grumbling and poking each other and watching Race taking pictures of flowers. I was bored out of my mind, and occupied myself by trying to get closer to David and farther away from Spot. Needless to say, I was not having very much success.  
  
"Where the hell did you come from?" I demanded, looking over to find Spot at my elbow yet again.  
  
Spot shrugged. "I'm like a bad penny; I always turn up," he said, and proceeded to make some incredibly disturbing tongue gestures at me.  
  
"I see," said David.  
  
"Behold!" gasped Racetrack from up ahead. "An Arctic Poppy!"  
  
"Poppies will make them sleeeeeeeep!" said Swifty in an uncanny impression of the Wicked Witch of the West, which caused a full-blown reenactment of a scene from "Wicked" by him and his boyfriend, looking at me meaningfully every few lines as if searching for signs that I was dying to sing Elphaba's part with them. Ha.  
  
I decided to look at David instead of making myself go through the pain of watching them. "Do you know what time it is?" I asked him.  
  
David glanced at his wrist and squinted for a full ten seconds before realizing he had forgotten to wear his watch. "No idea," he said, grinning at me. "It's getting late."  
  
"I HATE being outside!" Spot yelled, tried to pull the leg of his pants from some brambles. "Jack, save me!"  
  
I looked at him.  
  
"Aww, you guy suck," he said, and he sat down and crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm not moving any further. I hate the brambles, and I hate being cold, and I hate YOU!" He directed the last word at Racetrack, who was examining a fireweed and didn't answer.  
  
"Aw c'mon, Spot, you can't stay here all night," said David reasonably.  
  
"Sure he can," I answered.  
  
Spot glared at me. "What's that supposed to mean, Cowboy? Don't be ridiculous-from the moment you met me, you haven't been able to keep your eyes off me!"  
  
"Oh yeah?" I leaned against a tree and slid my hat down over my face so that I wouldn't have to look at him any more. Maybe I'd finally be able to get some sleep.  
  
"Umm, Race?" said Bumlets after a moment.  
  
"Yes, Bumlets?" I heard Racetrack answer irritably. "I'm kind of busy at the moment; these forget-me-nots are incredible. What do you want?"  
  
Bumlets cleared his throat awkwardly. "I think our map is wrong."  
  
There was silence for a minute, and then I heard Race snatch the map from the other boy's hands. "Of course the map isn't wrong; I got it for twenty bucks at the base camp. Look-according to the map, we should be right about-" He stopped.  
  
"Yeah, we should be in the middle of a lake," said Bumlets.  
  
There was another long pause.  
  
"Shit," said Swifty.  
  
"Lost?!" Spot yelled, his voice cracking. "We can't be lost! I'm too YOUNG to die! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME, I'M AN AMERICAN-"  
  
"Aw, shut up, Spot," said David impatiently. "Let me see that map, I'll bet you're just holding it upside-down or something."  
  
He wasn't. The map was wrong.  
  
"Aww, where are we, anyway?" Spot whined after about ten minutes of fruitless map-reading. He was still stuck to the bramble bushes, I was still hiding behind my hat, and Bumlets, Swifty, David, and Race had sunk dejectedly onto the scrub grass.  
  
There was silence for a minute. Then- "Farther from camp than I thought," said Racetrack softly.  
  
"How do you know that?" David asked.  
  
Race didn't say anything. I heard Spot gasp faintly at my right, and I took my hat off my face. I gasped too.  
  
Standing before us was a very tall, very thin, very dark, very scary old man. His hair was white and frizzy, standing a good five inches out on either side of his head, and his eyes were wild and shining. He was smiling crookedly at the six of us.  
  
"Holy crap," said Bumlets softly.  
  
--  
  
I had never seen a Mesolithic tribe in the middle of Alaska before, and I was beginning to wonder whether I was having a Hansel moment and just high from some sort of weed that I'd been smoking for the past five days. Scary Old Man turned out to be pretty nice, but he didn't seem to realize that we didn't speak his language.  
  
No, I mean he was seriously ranting on in some unusual dialect and expecting us to understand everything he was saying. Racetrack was trying very hard to be polite, but I could see the corners of his eyes crease up the way they always did when he was confused or frustrated or both. I tried not to laugh.  
  
We walked through the middle of town, where wide-eyed, dark-skinned people were selling goods. Spot was very excited; he hadn't been shopping for a week and a half, and he was starting to go into withdrawal. He was also very broke.  
  
"Water? No, thank you, fish make love in it," he was saying to a street vendor. "Is there anyone here who speaks English? Or maybe even ancient Greek? No, thank you, ma'am, I'm a vegetarian. Hey! Does anyone understand a word I'm saying here?"  
  
"C'mon, Spot," I said, taking him by the elbow so that he would follow us into a small hut at the end of the road.  
  
The moment we stepped inside, I knew I was going to like it here. The air smelled faintly of some sort of wood, and the floor was carpeted with the kind of stuff that feels really nice between your toes. I was tempted to take off my shoes and socks and walk around the room several times, but I decided against it. The last thing I wanted was for Spot to think I was stripping or something...  
  
Scary Old Man smiled at us as we sat down, and he nodded to someone just outside the hut. Two or three young women entered, bowed to us, and handed us crude bowls of some sort of food.  
  
"Ohh, I hope this means dinner," said Spot anxiously. "God, I'm starving."  
  
"Thank you," said Racetrack as he accepted the dish. I got one too, and looked down.  
  
It seemed to be a combination of cooked rice and smushed flies all mixed together into one disgusting paste. I looked over at Race, who was eating contentedly, and then at David, Swifty, and Bumlets, who were tentatively poking at it. I looked back down at mine. "Ah well, couldn't be much worse than our omelet mix," I said, shrugging, and I tried it. Personally, I thought the omelet mix was much worse.  
  
Spot stared at me, carefully not looking at his bowl. "I can't eat this," he said.  
  
"That's more food than these people eat in a week," said Racetrack, trying to smile so that Scary Old Man and the women wouldn't see that anything was wrong. "They're starving."  
  
"Oh, well then-" Spot tried to offer the food back to the women, but Race stopped him.  
  
"You're insulting them, and you're embarrassing me," he said. "Eat it."  
  
Spot glared at him, lower lip trembling, and then looked back down at the food. With a barely-repressed shudder, he stuck his fingers into the paste and put some in his mouth. He looked like he was about to throw up.  
  
Race continued to eat, satisfied, and then turned to Scary Old Man. "Thank you," he said, and then David repeated it in twenty other languages.  
  
Scary Old Man's smile broadened. "You ah Doctah Jones?" he asked, his words barely recognizable because of his thick accent.  
  
"You speak English?!" Race demanded.  
  
"Of course," said Scary Old Man lightly. "What country do you think this is?"  
  
"If this is America, why the hell are you serving us squished bugs?" Spot muttered under his breath. Swifty smacked him.  
  
"Doctah Jones, we need your help," said Scary Old Man to Racetrack. "That is why you haf been brought heah."  
  
Race's brow furrowed. "We weren't... brought here. Our map is wrong," he said.  
  
"It's wrong," said Spot, and he tried to act it out with his hands.  
  
"On the way to Delhi, you will go to Pankot," said Scary Old Man, still smiling happily.  
  
"Pankot isn't on the way to Delhi," said Race, raising an eyebrow. He stopped. "Wait, what the hell-We aren't even going to Delhi! Listen, mister, I think you've got the wrong guy here. Thank you for the smushed fly pudding, but my friends and I really have to get going." He stood up, and the rest of us followed suit.  
  
One of the women reached out and grasped Bumlets' arm before he could go. "This is how we say goodbye where I come from," she said, and she kissed him.  
  
"And this is how we say goodbye in Alaska, Doctah Jones," said Scary Old Man, and he smiled and punched Race. "Thank you foh all your help."  
  
David looked at me. "I liked the Alaskan way better," he said.  
  
"So did I," I answered, grinning.  
  
The six of us left the hut in a hurry, Race rubbing his jaw and grumbling under his breath. "I think I got cooties..." Bumlets sobbed, his head resting against Swifty's shoulder. "That was terrible!"  
  
As we left the village, we passed a young man, a woman, and a small boy who looked to be about ten. "He's wearing a Mets hat!" Swifty gasped, and David nudged him to shut up.  
  
The young man stopped and looked Racetrack up and down from under the rim of his fedora. "Nice hat," he said, eyebrows raised in slight surprise.  
  
"Right back atcha," Race answered with an identical expression on his face.  
  
"Ah, Doctah Jones!" called Scary Old Man, striding forward from inside the tent.  
  
"Yeah?" said Race and the other young man at the same time. They turned and stared at each other again.  
  
"Sorry," said Race. He looked back at us. "C'mon, guys, let's go. I still want to get a picture of a bearberry bush for my memoir, and it's getting late."

"Take however many photos you want," Bumlets muttered, "I just want to get back to the campsite soon. Swifty's feeling weak, and I need to give him a sponge bath."

"You do?" Swifty asked.

But we didn't get back to the campsite soon. We didn't even get back to the campsite eventually. You see, when you're in the Alaskan wilderness, with a useless map and a flamingly gay Brooklynite, your chances of finding your tent again are slightly between winning the lottery and dying in a freak toilet plunging accident. Which, somewhere after mile six, was beginning to look pretty attractive.

"Hey guys?" Racetrack said, after we had been wandering around for two hours and a few stars were already in the sky, "um, I think we might be going in circles here."

"WHAT?" Bumlets roared.

"Well, uh…see that Birch? I think we've passed it before."

"How can you _tell_?"

"Well, it has that kind of crooked—no, Bums, to the left, I think—uh—" seeing the glare Bumlets was sending him, Racetrack faltered and began to fiddle nervously with his bunny ears.

"THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME, RACE! THEY'RE BIRCHES! WE'RE LOST AND WE'RE GOING TO DIE OUT HERE, AND ALL BECAUSE OF YOUR CRAPPY NAVIGATIONAL SKILLS!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Racetrack said angrily. "Since when is this _my _fault?"

"You're the hike leader!"

"The map was wrong!"

"SO? _You _were responsible! What—" he stopped suddenly, and stared at Racetrack, who had that constipated look he always got when he was angry. "You wanna make something of it, huh, Stretch?"

Racetrack raised a clenched fist. "Just say when, pal."

Now, allow me to clarify something here: if you were to look at Bumlets, and then at Racetrack, and be asked who would win in a fair fight, you wouldn't have much trouble coming up with an answer. Bumlets is a dancer; he works out five hours a day, he's strong, he's agile, he's flexible. Every part of his body is absolutely toned to perfection. Racetrack, on the other hand: Racetrack is built more along the lines of the "short Italian guy" physique. Look at Bumlets, look at Racetrack. Try to figure out who'll win.

If you say Bumlets, then you obviously don't know what Racetrack is like when he gets angry.

After Racetrack had flipped Bumlets over backwards and gotten him into a stunning full-nelson, he wrapped his hands around his neck and said, through gritted teeth, "all I have to do is squeeze."

"And all I have to do is scream."

Sighing, Racetrack let go, and Bumlets straightened up, rubbing the back of his neck and looking at him, more than a little impressed. "Didn't know you had in you."

"Yeah, well," Race said. "That's what you get for messin' with a Jet." Even Spot stopped beating his head against a tree for a while to gaze at him moonily.

And as Swifty rushed to attend to Bumlets' battle wounds, Racetrack began to sing a proud rendition of "The Racetrack Song" and Spot swooned, I looked over and noticed that, somewhere along the line, David had sat down under a tree and begun, very quietly, to cry. My heart went out to him and I made towards him, but he saw me and quickly started to wipe his tears away. I took hold of his wrist. "What's goin' on?" I asked softly so that no one else would hear.

"Nothin'," said David. "And I'm not cryin'," he added quickly.

I raised an eyebrow. "Okay, I believe you," I said.

"Really?"

"No." I smiled. "What's wrong? C'mon, Dave, I'm not gonna tell anyone..."

David pulled his wrist from my grasp and looked away. "You won't understand," he mumbled.

"Hey." I tipped his chin so that he would have to meet my eyes. "I'm your friend. I'm always gonna understand. What do you think I'm gonna do, laugh?"

David looked at me for a minute, his bright eyes still wet, and then he looked away. "Fine," he said. "I'll tell you—I'm scared of the dark."

And you know what?

I laughed.

David pouted slightly and looked away again, his eyes cast downward. "I knew you wouldn't understand," he said quietly. "Nobody ever does."

I stopped laughing. "Aw Dave—"

"It's David, okay?" He was getting defensive, I could tell. He still wouldn't look at me. "Whatever, it doesn't matter. I'll be fine. Just—go and swoon with Spot over Race or somethin', all right?"

I cleared my throat awkwardly and didn't move. "I'm sorry, David," I said softly. "I shouldn't have laughed. I was scared of the dark for two years after I saw Stephen King's 'Children of the Corn', and I had to sleep with this teddy bear Spot gave me so that I wouldn't be scared." I paused. "I'm still sleepin' with it, actually. Ew. Spot germs. I should throw that thing out."

"You sleep with a teddy bear?" David asked, finally looking at me.

Crap.

"It doesn't matter," I said, waving a hand dismissively. "Anyway, if we do end up sleeping out in the woods tonight—you can sleep near me, okay?"

David smiled hesitantly. "Okay," he said. "But only if you let me see that teddy bear when we get home."

"Believe me; you don't want to see it."

And so, as the evening stars continued to appear in the sky (and Bumlets insisted on singing Les Mis for about twenty minutes—"Take my haaaaaaand, Cosette, the light is faaaaaadiiiiiing! C'mon, sing with me, Swifty! Can't you seeeeeeeeeee the eeeeeeeevening staaaaaaaaar appeeeeeeaaaaaariiiiiiiiiiiiing?"), the six of us chose a dry-ish patch of scrubby grass and curled up at the bases of trees, feeling like real, genuine Lost Boys from Peter Pan. David snuggled up next to me underneath the birch tree Race had pointed out earlier, and Spot got stuck in some more brambles and decided to sleep there for the night. Yes, everything was as it should be, and I can honestly say I have never been more happy sleeping outside.

Except that one time a couple of years ago when I came to David's apartment and slept on his fire escape because I missed him. He didn't see me in the morning, and his sister Sarah attacked me and insisted on making me breakfast, but I had been happy.

My little trip down memory lane was interrupted by an all-too-familiar noise to my left, back in the woods a little bit.

The snapping of a twig.

"Spot," said Bumlets before anyone could move, "If you say anything about Ricky Martin, I am going to kill you."

"Hey!" said Spot poutily from his bramble bed. "Don't make fun!"

"I thought we already established it was Enrique Englasias," said Swifty, confused.

"Same difference. In all honesty, I'd rather listen to Beethoven's compositions than either of them."

"Is he dead?"

Another twig snapped, closer this time, and Racetrack stood up. "What the hell are you doin', Race, Beethoven will see you!" Spot shrieked.

"I want to be the first man alive to have a scary Alaskan monster in my memoirs," said Race happily, and he disappeared into the woods.

There was silence for a minute. "He's lost his mind," said David.

"Of course," I answered.

A twig snapped again, and there was a yelp, and a click, and a flash. "RACETRACK HAS BEEN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING!" Spot screamed, trying desperately to get un-stuck from the brambles.

"Don't be an idiot, Spot, that was his camera," said David wearily.

"YOU HAVE NO PROOF OF THAT!" Spot yelled.

Just then, Race came galloping back into the clearing with a triumphant look on his face. "I return victorious!" he declared. "My memoirs will be absolutely phenomenal, gentlemen! I can start giving out autographs now, if you like. They'll be worth more than a Ted Williams signature one of these days, I can assure you of that..."

But none of us were really listening. Swifty had grabbed his camera from around his neck, and the five of us were crowded around it, trying to see the picture on the tiny screen. "Where's me pitcha, where's me pitcha?" Spot demanded as we went through a lot of random photographs. "Ooh, look, it's Jack! Whoa, when were you wearing_ that_? It looks pretty damn—"

"Wouldja keep your fingers off me face?" I asked irritably, wrenching his hand out of the way.

"...and all the chic's'll want my to sign their bodies, I suppose," Race continued, oblivious to the fact that no one was listening to a word he was saying. "I'll be a star, and the audience will LOVE me! And I'll love them for lovin' me, and they'll love me for lovin' them, and we'll love each other..."

Suddenly, Swifty stopped. "I've found it," he said.

"Lemme see, lemme see!" Spot hollered. There was a moment of silent struggle as he tried to climb onto my shoulders for a better view and I tried to wriggle my way out of his reach, but in the end he won and perched happily on top of me. Then we all looked at the camera.

"Oh my—" said David.

Saved on the digital screen was an enormous, furry, black thing that looked to be about eight feet tall, at the very least. It seemed as though it had been making its way toward Racetrack as he took the picture, but the flash had startled the thing to make it stop for a second. Its mouth was open, and we could all see its inch-long, razor-sharp teeth.

"It has terribly red eyes," Spot remarked. "We should use that Red Eye pen on this photograph; it's much more flattering."

It struck me that this... thing was still out there in the woods now. Possibly watching us at this very moment. I shuddered slightly and glanced back into the woods, trying to look nonchalant. Suddenly, I wasn't quite so happy to be sleeping outside anymore.

--

**Shoutouts** (done by Saturday, this time, with the assistance of Kid Blink, because he's adorable beyond words).

--

**Aelia**** O'Hession:**

BLINK: Spot is not misunderstood. He's sadistic and obnoxious.

SATURDAY: That's not true—he just thinks he's a sexy beast. But he appreciates your sympathy, and so does Jack.

BLINK: And being paranoid is indeed very fun.

SATURDAY: Thank you for the review!

--

**uninvisible**

SATURDAY: By all means, please do eat Spot up.

BLINK: He's particularly good with raspberry jam, but I suppose strawberry would be just as good...

SATURDAY: Thanks for the review!

BLINK: ((proudly gives you a daisy)) I picked it myself, just for you!

--

**Erin Go Bragh:**

SATURDAY: ((blinks))

BLINK: You, my dear, are excellent at rambling.

SATURDAY: I vote we give her a gold star. What say you, good sir?

BLINK: Aye. ((gives you a gold star))

SATURDAY: Thanks for the review!

--

**silk'n'steel**

SATURDAY: I think Dakki's feeling much better now—your flowers and chicken soup were much appreciated.

BLINK: She stayed in bed while Dalton read excerpts from "Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul" to her. Who knew he was so deep?

SATURDAY: I certainly didn't.

BLINK: Neither did I. Of course, the fact that he painted on his face with lipstick and beat on his drums every other line kind of took away from the effect, don't you think?

SATURDAY: Of course. But that's only to be expected. Anyway, thanks for the review!

--

**Sapphy:**

BLINK: ((approaches Sapphy with a bottle of sunscreen)) Mwahaha—

SATURDAY: Hey, Blink, we mocked her about her fear of fish already in her birthday fic. It would be downright cruel to make fun of her fear of sunscreen, too.

BLINK: ((thinks for a minute)) I see your point. ((puts the sunscreen away))

SATURDAY: And yes, Titanic is terrible.

BLINK: ((solemnly)) Amen.

SATURDAY: Thanks for the review!

--

**Dreamer110:**

SATURDAY: Racetrack's watch was Dakki's idea.

BLINK: She's a bloody genius, isn't she?

SATURDAY: It's insane. The song, however, was my idea. I'm a bloody genius too, am I not?

BLINK: ...Um, Saturday? I'm sorry to have to say this to you, but... ((whispers)) ...you took that idea from a different movie. So you're not a genius, you're more of a plagiarizer.

SATURDAY: AT LEAST LET ME ENJOY THE IDEA, BLINK!

--

**Braids21:**

SATURDAY: I hate Ricky Martin too. Ahh...

BLINK: However, I must say that "Livin' La Vida Loca" is an excellent karaoke song.

SATURDAY: ((looks at him)) I don't want to know.

BLINK: Thanks for reviewing!

--

**Thumbsucker**** Snitch:**

SATURDAY: Honestly? I don't think I've ever seen or heard anything more terrifying than Enrique Englasias.

BLINK: I second that.

SATURDAY: I hope you had a fun time at work... ((dies laughing))

BLINK: Thanks for reviewing, and we apologize for the lack of Snittery in this story. ;-) Much love to you!

--

SATURDAY: Got everything written down?

DAKKI: Because if you've caught every reference, you could win…

DAKKI & SATURDAY: ((fake announcer voices)) A Night on the Town with Charlie Dalton!

DALTON: ((boogies)) Who's the pretties preppie on the block? It's me! It's me! Who's the—

SATURDAY: Dude…stealing The Racetrack Song? …So not cool.

RACETRACK: Somebody say me name?

DALTON: ((cowers)) I'm sorry Race, I—

BRROKLYN NEWSIES: Grr.

RACETRACK: Get 'im, Boys.

DAKKI: OH MY GOD! They're…THEY'RE THRUSTING HIM TO DEATH!

SATURDAY: ((pause)) Well, review, because you COULD win…A Night on the Town with Racetrack Higgins!

RACETRACK: ((beams))


	4. Chapter Three

****

Author's Note: SATURDAY: No, Liz, you're not seeing things. We really are updating.

DAKKI: After a most triumphant phone conversation last night.

DALTON: Which took about an hour and a half. I was ashamed.

SATURDAY: But it was worth it—oh, it was worth it, my friends. For I found that my dear Dakki is not a fourty-two-year-old rapist, but in actuality a sixteen-year-old girl with a voice!

DAKKI: ((gasps)) Who would have thought?!

****

Disclaimer: We own nothing, except for the ice cube, which belongs to Dakki, and the water bottle, which belong to Saturday.

-----

****

Chapter Three—The Amazing Singing Canadian Sasquatch

That night, we were freezing cold, terrified, eaten alive by mosquitoes, and tortured by Spot's sleep-singing of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." Every single time a leaf rustled or a twig snapped, we were convinced it was the vicious creature emerging from the woods to tear off our arms, snap our necks, mash us up, and eat us on toast. I spent the entire night unable to think straight, scared out of my wits, curled up next to David as I watched him sleep. And all in all, I don't think I had ever been happier in my life.

Apart from David, who I was beginning to thing could sleep through anything, none of us got any real rest that night. For the first few hours we actually tried to put the (enormous, eight-foot, red-eyed, fanged) monster out of our heads and get some shut-eye, but around midnight we had given up and begun to try to pass the time. First we pretended we were soldiers in a trench in World War I, which was fun for a while, with Racetrack speaking longingly about his doily collection back home and Swifty and Bumlets making out as if they would never see each other again (which, granted, wasn't all that different from how they normally acted). But Spot got pissed off at me when I claimed he was dead and we'd have to bury him, and tried to smack me upside the head, and ended up getting even more tangled up in the brambles he had been sleeping in, and then while he was struggling to get out he somehow got his tongue impaled on a thorn. Then he wailed miserably for about ten minutes until Racetrack finally got up and pulled it out (Spot couldn't do it because his hands were stuck too), at which point Spot's entire tongue swelled up and he developed a lisp.

"You sound like Jack that time he cut his tongue on an ice cube," Race said, laughing.

"Thut up."

"Remember that, Jack?" Racetrack asked me. "Winter break of Freshman year? And that was the day you went to dinner at Davey's house, and every time you smiled you had, like, a foot of tongue poking out."

"Yeah, Race, I remember…"

"Mrs. Jacobs wouldn't even let you in the house for a year. Remember that, Spot? Remember Jack's tongue?"

"Oh, go fuck yourthelf, Mithter Higginth," Spot muttered, at which point Racetrack laughed so hard that he nearly rolled into a tree.

Eventually, sympathy got the best of me and, since I felt so sorry for Spot, I let him choose the next game we would play. So until dawn we did really quiet charades, so that the monster wouldn't hear us, and David wouldn't wake up. He just looked so peaceful when he was asleep.

"All right, I know one thing for sure," said Bumlets around four in the morning. "When Jack cut his tongue that time, his lisp definitely wasn't as bad as Spot's right now."

"Hey!" said Spot sulkily. "That'th mean and entirely unnethethary. It'th not my fault the brambleth have it in for me."

"Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts," said Swifty.

"Shut up, Thwifty."

"Oooh!" Bumlets laughed. "That sounds like a term of endearment! From now on, I'm calling you Thwifty!", and with that, he and his boyfriend resumed their passionate game of tonsil hockey.

Spot stared longingly at the pair of them for a minute, and then remembered he was supposed to be upset, and pouted again. "That'th it," he said with conviction. "I'm pulling a David Thedaris and not uthing any more wordth with the letter 'eth' in them."

"HA! Good luck with that," Racetrack sniggered.

Spot stuck his tongue out at him, a gesture which was probably meant to be somewhat menacing, but the fact that his tongue was now about the size of my fist sort of ruined the effect. It was quite a while before Race could stop laughing. "So you really think you can avoid all words with the letter 's' in 'em?" he said with a grin.

Spot nodded firmly. "I do indeed," he said.

"Well then." Racetrack rubbed his hands together, his dark eyes sparkling maniacally. "I challenge you to a battle of wits."

"For Jack?" asked Spot eagerly.

"HEY!" I said indignantly.

"For Jack," Race agreed, nodding.

"To the death?" Spot continued.

Race nodded again.

Spot smiled. "All right, then. I'll take you on. Pour the wine."

We didn't have any wine, but a great procedure was made of passing around Bumlets' water bottle and swearing, Dead Poet's Honor (or, in Spot's case, The Honor of More Than One Dead Bard), that whoever won the battle of wits would get me. I wasn't quite sure what this meant, but I decided to wake David up just in case. He was very clever, and I wanted him to win me. Mwaha.

"So Spot," said Racetrack, clapping his hands together and smiling in a sinister sort of way. "Let's begin quite simply. What is your name?"

And Spot smiled back and answered quite smoothly, "In my homeland they call me Gabriel, but I prefer 'Pot' with the nineteenth letter of the alphabet attached to the beginning."

Wow. Something Spot was actually good at.

"What do you think of Leonardo DiCaprio?" I asked.

"A very good-looking and talented young man."

"Which do you think is his best work?"

There was a pause. We all knew that Spot loved 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape', but there was definitely an "s" in that title. And he would rather swallow the rest of the bramble bush than change the title of such a masterpiece.

"...'Titanic'," he said.

"Liar," I said immediately.

"Be quiet, my love," said Spot evenly.

"HE LIKES 'WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE'!" I insisted.

David touched my arm, smiling at me. "Jack, even if he does; do you really want to win _yourself?"_

I didn't talk much after that point.

"Continue the battle, gentlemen; I find it quite thrilling, to be truthful," said Spot airily.

"Nice vocabulary," said Bumlets with a grin. "You sound absolutely bizarre, did you know that?"

"Yeah, I know." This did not seem to be going over very well with Spot's ego. He kept sending me fleeting glances which I tried to ignore... At least he couldn't make disturbing gestures with his tongue anymore.

"I'm out of ideas," said Race after a moment. "Let's consider our old high school. What was your favorite subject?"

"Lunch doesn't count," said David.

Spot glared at him. "The language in which we talk," he said slowly.

"English, then," said Bumlets.

"Mm-hmm."

Race drummed his fingertips against the log upon which he was seated. "And what was your favorite kind of sandwich during lunch?"

Spot scowled. "During lunch I frequently ate chopped marine life on white bread," he said grudgingly.

At which point Swifty burst into hysterical laughter and Spot scowled even more. "You shouldn't belittle me and my limited vocabulary," he said grumpily.

"But you called seafood salad 'marine life'!" Swifty gasped through tears of laughter. "I am putting that on my profile when we get back!"

"You are such a girl," said Bumlets fondly, kissing his boyfriend on the temple.

"No, I'm jutht a walking homothexual thtereotype," Swifty answered, grinning, and they began to make out again.

David sighed, and I squirmed slightly and tried to discreetly pull him closer to my chest. "What did you think of Race when you first met him?" he asked Spot, completely unaware of my desperation to be near him.

"An idiot," said Spot without hesitation.

"HEY!" Race snapped, smacking him.

"And me?"

"Cute, but annoying."

"Um, thanks... I guess..." David shuddered slightly. "Oh, and Bumlets and Swifty?"

"The latter I believed to be completely mute, and the former appeared to be very attractive but not very intelligent," said Spot.

"And my trig teacher, Mr. Fenster?" David prompted.

"A heroine addict."

"Race's dog?"

"A bat lacking the ability to fly."

"Your French teacher?"

"An convict from the Czech Republic."

"And Johnny Damon?"

"A Neanderthal."

"And Jack?"

"A thexy beatht."

There was a pause, and Swifty and Bumlets actually stopped kissing (something that happens very rarely) and stared at Spot. And then at David. "You win," said Race slowly. "Now we see who is right, and who is dead."

"I AM NOT DEAD!" Spot yelped.

"No, but you have just officially lost Jack."

Silence.

I stared down at my fingers, focusing on entwining them together in a complicated sort of knot so as to avoid eye-contact with David—who was focusing on entwining his shoelaces together in a complicated sort of knot, too. Spot appeared to have lost the capacity to speak altogether, and was now mouthing wordlessly at Racetrack. Swifty and Bumlets had lost interest; they were making out again.

Finally, Spot spoke. "But—but he'th myJacky-boy!"

"Not anymore," said Race, smirking. "He's _Dave_'s Jacky-boy now."

"HE ITH NOT!"

"You agreed to it, Spot. Dead Poet's Honor. You swore on the holy water bottle!"

"Race, Thwifty lookth like he'th trying to force the water bottle down Bumletth' panth at the moment. I don't think it'th very holy anymore."

"How dare you!" I snapped suddenly. They all looked at me, surprised, except David, who continued to examine his shoelaces. "All of you, sitting around deciding my future? I am not a prize to be won!"

Which turned Spot on much more than I initially hoped.

By the time the sun rose and no one had yet been eaten, we were all feeling pretty sure that Bigfoot was not coming to get us today. We finally managed to get Spot out of the brambles, started up Race's MountainMan 3000 and were just about to leave, when all of a sudden the thing we had been dreading happened at last. And, as usual, it was completely Spot Conlon's fault.

Maybe he was overcome by the glory of the sunrise. Maybe he had just gone too long without singing. I don't know. But for whatever reason, as we were packing up and I was trying to get up the nerve to try to kiss David, Spot climbed up a hill, flung back his arms in operatic pose, and began to sing.

"I WANNA BE! WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE! I WANNA THEE! WANNA THEE 'EM DANTHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN…."

Oh my God. The Little fucking Mermaid.

"UP WHERE THEY WALK! UP WHERE THEY RUN! UP WHERE THEY THTAY ALL DAY IN THE THUN!..."

And then, a strange thing happened. Another voice joined Spot's: a voice that was loud, and low, and booming. And sounded to me like it was coming from a mouth that had an awful lot of teeth in it.

"Wanderin' free! WITHH I could beeeeeeeeee…..part of that WOOOOOOOOOORRRRLLD!"

Spot turned around, grinning like an idiot, and took a bow. Then, he saw the expressions on our face, and noticed that we were staring at him in horror.

Or, more accurately, staring at something behind him.

"What ith it?" Spot asked, oblivious.

"Oh, my God," Swifty muttered, clinging to Bumlets's toned bicep for support. "It's Spot's ex-boyfriend."

We all stared at him. "What the fuck," said Racetrack after a minute.

Swifty sighed, obviously exasperated that we didn't understand. "It's DROGGO!" he said with the air of speaking to someone either very small or very stupid.

"It's BIGFOOT, you dumbass!" Race snapped.

"Oh." Swifty squinted. "Wait, are you sure? Because I really could have sworn it was—"

"SWIFTY! Eight feet tall, covered with fur, enormous teeth? Vocabulary limited to grunts? Could that be anyone but Bigfoot? Has Bumlets finally sucked your brain out through your mouth?"

Swifty just rolled his eyes and skipped off down th hill to make out some more with Bumlets. Sighing, Racetrack turned to me, running a hand through his hair. "God, what an idiot," he muttered.

"Actually," David said thoughtfully, "He does have a point."

I looked at the enormous figure that was standing behind Spot (who was still completely oblivious). Davey was right. If you got him at the right angle, Bigfoot could have easily passed for Spot's ex-boyfriend.

Before we started going out at the end of Freshman year, Spot had been having a long-term romance for some time with a Canadian soccer player named Droggo, who was nearly seven feet tall, furry, and had a vocabulary that seemed to consist entirely of bad scrabble hands. For almost nine months he lived pretty much exclusively in the room that Spot shared with Bumlets, drinking all the instant coffee, stretching out Bumlets' legwarmers, and leaving the entire place smelling "like Canada." Finally, after Droggo and all of his soccer team friends managed to break Bumlets' prized first-place dance trophy during an impromptu soccer game, Bumlets snapped. He packed his bags, had a quiet nervous breakdown, and moved into Swifty and Dave's room, and it can be said that the one good thing that came of Spot and Droggo's courtship was Bumlets and Swifty getting together. I only wish that David could have seen it as an opportunity to move into my dorm room.

"What ith it?" Spot asked in exasperation, after none of us had said anything for nearly five minutes, all staring, as we were, at Bigfoot. "What'th going on?"

"Spot," Race said, "I want you to listen to me carefully. Take a deep breath. Don't panic. And slowly turn around."

Sensing the importance of the situation, Spot followed directions. He took a deep breath, turned around, and came face to face with Bigfoot. And shrieked.

"Jethuth Chritht!" he cried. "It'th DROGGO!"

"I TOLD YOU!" Swifty shouted from the bottom of the hill.

"Spot, you idiot!" Race moaned. "It isn't Droggo. It's Bigfoot."

"Are you pothitive?" Spot asked. He turned to Bigfoot and poked him in the chest. "Ith that you, Droggo? I thought you were back in Thathkatchewan!"

"Grf," Bigfoot said, and without another word, he picked up Spot, slung him over his shoulder, and stalked off into the woods.

"Do we really have to save h—"

"YES," Racetrack said, "don't even argue."

"Really?"

"Jack, it's not Spot I'm worried about. It's Bigfoot. Think about what that hormone-driven Brooklynite could do to him in two hours."

"Um," said David. "I'd really rather not."

"Exactly," said Racetrack, adjusting his fedora, and with that, we set off into the woods.

-----

"Is this entirely necessary? I think we're wasting our time. Do you _really _think the world's gonna miss a horny flaming sixteen-year-old and an eight-foot fuzzy Alaskan man?" I demanded, poking Race in the chest.

"He's not a man, he's a Big Foot!"

"Brilliant observation, Bumlets," said Race, rolling his eyes. He turned back to me. "In all honesty, I don't think the world would miss either of them."

"Well then why are we going to find them?" I demanded.

"Because Big Foot is part of the Alaskan culture!" David yelped.

He was so sexy when he was being smart. Which was all the time. Goddammit, he was always so frickin' sexy!

Wait, I forgot. I was in the middle of arguing. Must—get—mind—off—David—

"There _is_ no Alaskan culture!" I cried, throwing my hands into the air. "It's, like, nonexistent! I've never even met _an _Alaskan, let alone many Alaskans, which would create an entire culture!"

"Actually, there are approximately 324,112 males and 302,820 females in the state of Alaska as of 2000," David mumbled, more to himself than anyone else.

"Besides—Spot is our friend!" said Bumlets.

We all stared at him for a good long while. "You really are a meathead, Bumlets," said Race after a moment. "How in HELL you managed to get into such a good college, I'll never know."

"It's because I'm so good-looking," said Bumlets seriously.

"Amen to that," Swifty with a giggle, pinching his boyfriend's ass. "I love boys with dark hair."

"So do I," said Bumlets, and they began to make out again. While walking. I was very impressed with their talent.

Race frowned. "Well... I like blondes!" he said, obviously wishing he had a snappier comeback.

"I like brunets," said David quietly, sounding almost wistful.

Racetrack shot him a sidelong glance. "So he really is your Jacky-boy, then," he said slyly.

David choked. "What?!"

"You like brunets!" Race crowed. He tried to pat my head, but I wiggled out of the way, bright red. "This is hysterical. How long have you been crushin' on Jack? Man, if Spot only knew you were—"

"I am NOT attracted to Jack!" David yelped.

"Suuuuure, I believe you."

"I'm not!"

"You aaaaaare!"

"No I'm NOT! There is no way that I could possibly be attracted to _Jack Kelly _of _all_ people—oh, no offense, Jack."

"...none taken..."

Race sighed slightly, running a hand through his hair. "All right then, Dave. Prove it," he challenged.

David groaned. _"How?!"_

I really, really wished he hadn't left it up to Racetrack to decide; he was the type of kid who was too creative for his own good when it came to evil plots. He had mapped out our entire high school in his freshman year, and was all set to plant stink bombs in all of the drinking fountains and toilets on April Fool's. Luckily, the teachers found the map before he could begin to execute his plan, and April Fool's Day was blissfully stink bomb-free.

"Kiss Jack," he said after a moment, putting his hands into his pockets and grinning. "If you're so secure in the fact that you're not attracted to him, then kiss him. Bumlets, Swifty, and I will watch your groin and make sure you don't get an erection."

"RACE!" David and I yelped, both looking involuntarily down at his groin and then turning pink and looking away again.

"I think it's a great idea!" said Bumlets, and Swifty nodded vehemently. "If you don't like each other it's not gonna hurt anyone, and if you _do _like each other, then you might end up like Swifty and me!"

"God forbid," said Race, shuddering.

Swifty threw his water bottle at him.

David glanced at me, eyes wide. "Um..." he said awkwardly, and he looked away again and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"Aw c'mon, Dave, it'll only take a minute!" Swifty laughed.

"I don't like Jack!" said David desperately.

"And I'm sure Jack doesn't like you, now just go and _kiss him!" _said Race impatiently, grabbing David's arm and pushing him against my chest. He stepped back, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited.

I swallowed with difficulty. _This can't be happening this can't be happening this can't be happening this can't be_—

"Um... Okay." David coughed. "Let's just get this over with, all right? I mean, I like you, just..."

"Yeah, I know," I answered, studying his shoelaces.

There was a brief, awkward pause.

David reached forward and tipped my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes. Jesus Christ, did that boy have nice eyes. Clear and blue and cold and smoldering and terrifying and peaceful all at once, and I was having difficulty breathing. He moved his hand from my chin and smoothed it along the back of my neck, and then leaned forward—

"ONLY YOOOOU CAN MAKE THITH WORLD THEEM RIIIIIIGHT! ONLY YOOOOOU CAN MAKE THE DARKNETH BRIIIIIIGHT! ONLY YOU AND YOU ALOOONE CAN THRILL ME LIKE YOU DOOOO AND FILL MY HEART WITH LOVE FOR ONLY YOOOOOOOU! Thing with me, Droggo! ONLY YOOOOU CAN MAKE THITH CHAAAAANGE IN MEEEEEE! FOR IT'TH TRUUUUUUUE, YOU ARE MY DETHTINYYYYYYY! Or denthity, if you're George McFly, I gueth. Have you theen that movie, Droggo? 'Back to the Future'? Michael J. Foxth ith tho cuuute!"

David pulled back. I groaned and closed my eyes, my heart sinking to around my knees. WHY?!

"It's coming from over there!" Bumlets announced, pointing dramatically. "It's Spot, and he's singing that creepy song from 'So I Married An Axe Murderer'! WE MUST GO AND SAVE DROGGO!"

Which is exactly what we did.

I got there first. This was mainly because Bumlets and Swifty had insisted on running in slow-motion, and Racetrack, inspired by the drama of the situation, was trying to take photos of everything we passed as we chased after Spot and Droggo, while narrating. He tripped over a tree root right in the middle of saying "now this tree-shaped blur is actually a tree shaped tree, if you'll notice the distinct tree shape," and then he started crying and wanted to have his owie kissed, and then Swifty had to give him his last Big Bird Band-Aid, which he wasn't very happy about. For someone who wears pink bunny pajamas with footies, Racetrack isn't so tough.

And then, finally, we arrived in a clearing in the middle of the woods. I don't know what we had been expecting, exactly. Maybe Spot trying to rape Droggo. Or Spot being chased by Droggo. Or Spot having been torn to pieces by Droggo (I liked that one especially). But whatever it was, that wasn't what we saw. Because we came into the clearing and stumbled across our two friends, there was no mistaking the position they were in: Droggo was holding Spot in a passionate embrace, crushing him to his hairy chest, and kissing him passionately.

"Race," Bumlets said, "give me your fedora."

"Why?"

"'Cause I'm gonna puke in it."

Suddenly, Droggo broke away from Spot, looked off to the horizon, and, teary-eyed, began to sing. "NEVER KNEW, I COULD FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL LIKE THIS! LIKE I'VE NEVER SEEN THE SKYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY BE-E-FORE!"

"WANT TO VANISH INTHIIIIIIIIIIDE YOUR KITH!" Spot sang, "EVERY DAY, I LOVE YOU MOOOORE, A-AND MORE! Oh, Droggo, what a lovely thinging voithe you have!"

"Ég ást þú, ákaflega stuttur manneskja með hlægilegur áhersla," Droggo remarked passionately.

"Oh, Droggo. I love you too." Spot smiled and sang: "LITHEN TO MY HEART, YOU CAN HEEEEEEEEEEAR IT THINGTH!"

"TELLING MEEEEE TO GIVE YOU EEEEEEEEEEEEV'RYTHING!" Droggo sang back.

"THEATHONTH MAY CHANGE! WINTER TO THPRING!"

"BUT I LOVE YOU…UNTIL THE EEEEEEEEEEEND OF TIME!"

Droggo actually had a pretty good voice. It was deep and gravelly, sort of like Louis Armstrong's.

"Oh my GOD," Racetrack murmured, staring at them. "Guys, do you know what this means?"

"What does it mean, Race?" I asked wearily.

"I AM GOING TO HAVE THE BEST BIOGRAPHY EVER! And better yet—I can bring Bigfoot back to Boston, and market him as the Amazing Singing Sasquatch! We'll be millionaires!" He gasped, a look of ecstasy crossing over his face. "…I'll finally be able to buy a pet elephant…"

"But what if he actually is Droggo?" Swifty asked.

"Then I'll market him as the Amazing Singing Canadian. It's win-win." I could practically see the dollar signs in Racetrack's eyes.

"Oh, Droggo," Spot said, breathlessly, once they had finished singing, "I've never felt thith way, about anybody. I love you more than life itthelf."

Droggo picked Spot up and hugged him. "Við skulum gera rt viðbjóðslegur!"

"Oh, Droggo," Spot murmured, blushing.

"Gera þú ást mig eins og mikill eins og blekkingar-kúreki?" Droggo asked earnestly.

"Droggo!" Spot said. "How can you even thay that? Of courthe I love you more than Jack! I uthed to love him, sure…I mean, he wath my Jacky-boy. But then I lotht him, and I found you. And you're tho much better. Because…you're my Droggy-boy!"

Both Spot and Droggo started to cry with joy. Swifty looked on fondly. "Young love," he murmured softly. "Hey Bumlets, you wanna make out?"

"SPOT!" Racetrack called. "ASK BIGFOOT IF HE WANTS TO COME BACK TO BOSTON WITH US!"

"Droggy-Boy," Spot asked breathlessly, "how would you like to leave Alathka, and come back to Bothton to live with me?"

Droggo smiled, overjoyed. "Innilega ástvinur við mér skilst hér til segja okkar kveðja hér hún lies enginn knew hana virði the seint mikill dóttir af móðir jörð á this nótt hvenær við halda hátíðlegan the fæðing í þessi lítill bær af við ala upp okkar gler þú veðmál þinn rass til til sem minnir á gömlu dagana af innblástur leika skróp gerð eitthvað út af ómerkingur the þörf til tjá til miðla til að fara aftur the frækorn að fara geðveikur að fara vitlaus til elskandi spenna neitun eftirlaun til fleiri en einn mælivídd til starving fyrir eftirtekt hating siðvenja hating tilkall ekki til umtal auðvitað hating yndi gamall mamma og pabbi til útreiðar þinn reiðhjól iðdegi fortíð the þrír stykki föt til ávöxtur til neitun alger til alger til val til þorp rödd til un til dans neitun vegur til gera a líf sjálfskvalarfýsn sársauki fullkomnun vöðvi krampi hnykklæknir stuttur starfsferill eating ringulreið filma ævintýri leiðinlegur neitun fjölskylda leiðinlegur staðsetning dimma íbúð fullkominn andlit egos peningar og skítseyði tónlist stærðfræði einangrun taktur tilfinning máttur samræmi og þungur samkeppni stjórnleysi bylting réttlæti öskrandi fyrir lausn gerð lystigarður til mig til mig til þú og þú og þú þú og þú til fólk líf iwth líf með líf með ekki deyjandi frá sjúkdómur láta hann á meðal okkur án synd vera the fyrstur tto fordæma."

"That means 'Yes'," Spot said helpfully.

--

****

Shoutouts!

--

****

Sapphy

DALTON: ((runs in slow motion)) K-K-K-K-K-K-K-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y!

KENNEDY: ((runs in slow motion)) C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E!

CRUTCHY: ((hobbles in slow motion)) W-W-W-W-W-W-W-H-H-H-H-H-H-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-T-T T-T-T-H-H-H-H-H-E-E-E-E-E H-H-H-H-H-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L I-I-I-I-S-S-S G-G-G-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-N-G O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-N-N-N-N-N-N-N?

DAKKI: ((grins)) While they're busy with that…Miss Sapphykins, we have decided that for your incredibly recognition of nearly EVERY Indiana Jones reference, and your incredibly use of exclamation points AND the fact that you are the best reviewer EVER, you shall be awarded a night on the town with Racetrack Higgins! Allow me to present you with this twenty-dollar gift certificate for Chuck E. Cheese's.

RACETRACK: ((proudly)) Where a kid can be a kid!

--

****

Uninvisible

RACETRACK: ((dances)) Who's got the sexiest hat on the block?

DAKKI AND SATURDAY: It's him! It's Race!

DALTON: And who wins first runner-up for the Indiana Jones reference recognition

prize?

RACETRACK: …Me?

DALTON: Er.

SATURDAY: For your brilliant recognition and uber-fannage of Indiana Jones, we present you with…a night on the town with Charlie Dalton! To get to the hottest nightclubs in town, you will be presented with this luxury…golf cart.

DALTON: ((honks the horn))

--

****

Dreamer110

DALTON: How DID Spot get all those potatoes into Alaska?

RACETRACK: A number of theories have been devised.

DALTON: Theory 1(a.)—he put a potato in his bag and forgot about it, and then the potato, which was above average intelligence, cloned itself using the technologies available, thus creating a race of super-potatoes. Theory 1(b.)—a baked potato—

DAKKI: Do you get the sense that she was just being polite, guys?

DALTON: No.

--

****

Erin Go Bragh

JACK: WHY IS ME SINGING SO FUNNY! I'm a good singer! I have a good voice!

((crickets))

JACK: Right? …RIGHT?

SATURDAY: Um…let's move on…

--

****

Braids21

DALTON: What? Am I not great?

JACK: Do I not sing great?

DALTON: YES! And so do I! Jack, we have been ignored for too long.

JACK: Indeed.

DALTON: A-one, two…

JACK: MARRRIIIIAAA, MAARRIIIIAAA, MARRRIIIIAAAA…I just met a girl named MARIAAA!The most beautiful sound I EVER heard…

DALTON: The most beautiful sound I EVER heard…

--

****

Aelia O'Hession

RACETRACK: Never question my sanity.

DALTON: For it is obvious that he has none.

RACETRACK: Yep! ((pause)) …Wait a minute…

-----

****

Author's Note: DAKKI: So... Yeah! Leave a review!

SATURDAY: A nice, long one.

DAKKI: With exclamation points.

DALTON: And many references to how much you love me.

SATURDAY: Good night to all! ((blows kiss))

-Saturday and Dakki


	5. Chapter Four

**Author's Note:**

DAKKI: ((fluffs petticoats)) As a farewell to this fic, we have organized a little party to say goodbye.

SATURDAY: ((appears with a cake inscribed with "HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACK AND DAVE" in purple icing)) ((whispers)) Dalton made it... He worked so hard on the lettering and wouldn't erase it when he realized it wasn't actually their birthdays.

DALTON: ((waves oven mitts at readers)) I used my easy bake!

KNOX: And the frosting was made with eggs, sugar, milk, and a cup of love!

DAKKI: Ew.

SATURDAY: ...In any case. As this story has drawn to a close, thank you guys so much for reviewing! No virtual tackles of affection could ever convey the enormous amount of gratitude we feel for you.

DAKKI: And you really don't want to be virtually tackled by Knox or Charlie.

SPOT: I don't tackle. It smudges my mascara.

DAKKI: ...

CHARLIE: ...

KNOX: ...

JACK: ...

DAVID: I have the waterproof kind!

…and now, on with the fic!

**Toxic  
****Chapter Four—Droggo, Droggo**

**--**

The bus ride to Anchorage from Denali National Park took nearly eight hours, but it seemed like much longer since we all had our heads stuck out the window after about fifteen seconds. Racetrack was the only one of us unaffected by the stench of a Sasquatch (or Canadian) in heat, as he had been smart enough to bring along his Sharper Image foam nose plugs, _which not only block all offending odors, but also, for the comfort and convenience of the wearer, contain a tiny FM radio that can be tuned to any regional station!_—so, as we craned our necks out of the bus window, trying to avoid an aroma that smelled like a potent combination of a garbage dump in New Jersey and the cologne that Spot used to wear, we also got to hear Racetrack singing along with an all-day Joni Mitchell marathon on K-Bear. Spot, of course, was only further turned on by the smell, and spent the whole ride with his head resting against his boyfriend's chest, murmuring sweet nothings in his furry ear.

"You know," Swifty remarked, somewhere around mile forty, "I am still kind of amazed that Spot even managed to get Big—er—Drog—"

"How about 'Big Droggo'?" I suggested sarcastically.

"Perfect!" Swifty said. "Anyway, how do you think Spot managed to convince the bus driver to let him on? I mean, wouldn't he realize _something _was up?"

Bumlets shrugged. "He put sunglasses on him. And a Red Sox cap." Both Bumlets and Swifty had been talking much more on the bus trip that they usually did, mainly because the fact that they had their heads sticking out of different windows made it difficult to make out.

"But he's seven feet tall and covered in fur," David said pedantically. God, he was sexy. "Everyone here knows about Bigfoot. Wouldn't somebody figure it out?"

"He's wearing sunglasses," Bumlets repeated, as if he was talking to a very small child, or possibly Spot.

"I see," David said, and then ducked back inside the bus for a moment as we drove past an enormous birch that threatened to decapitate everyone.

Over in the seat next to Bumlets, Racetrack was doing his little sitting-down skippy dance, his eyes scrunched closed, completely oblivious, crooning along with Joni. Not singing. Crooning.

"I know you don't like weak women, you get bored so quick—and you don't li-ike strong women, 'cause they're hip to your tricks…it's been diiiiiiiiiiiirty for di-irty…"

All in all, it was a fairly enjoyable bus ride back to Anchorage. After about 7 hours, Bumlets located several clothes pins which had been in his pockets for reasons unknown, and we were able to finally bring our heads back within the vehicle and speak normally to each other. Spot kept us all entertained by showing off his extensive portfolio of Leonardo DiCaprio pictures, making each of us chose our favorites, and then flinging the entire binder at Racetrack's head when he announced that he didn't like men.

"He chose...poorly," said David idly, watching Race bandaging his head up with his sweatshirt.

Droggo was agreeable enough. He did not seem to be interested in pictures of half-naked (or, in the case of some, all naked) Leo DiCaprio, so he sat back and listened to "Mexican Wine" by Fountains of Wayne on Swifty's iPod for the entirety of the bus ride. Swifty, too soft-spoken and polite to voice his concerns, spent the ride alternating between kissing Bumlets passionately and cringing every time Droggo's claws scratched the smooth surface of his MP3 player.

I, naturally, was watching David.

"Is 'abnegate' spelled with an 'e' or an 'a'?" he asked, looking imploringly up at us with his pen resting against his lower lip. He had that sexy, I'm-trying-to-carry-on-a-conversation-without-completely-coming-out-of-my-homework-imposed-reverie look on his face, and his hair kept falling into his eyes. Man, I loved it when he was smart...

Race blinked. "What the hell does 'abnegate' mean, anyway?" he demanded.

"Just because you have the vocabulary of a Pop Tart doesn't mean everyone else does, too," said Bumlets smoothly.

Race chose to ignore this. "Fine! I alter my question. What I want to know is how you managed to get yourself homework during the summer of your senior year, Dave. That's just madness."

"I asked my teachers for some extra writing assignments to keep me up to date for college," said David easily, his eyes back on his paper as he began to scribble furiously again.

"You LOSER!" Spot laughed, looking up from his Leonardo DiCaprio portfolio.

David looked up. "Why?" he asked, eyebrows raised in mild surprise.

Which sent them all into hysterics.

"I asked Mrs. Watkins for some summer reading," I said loudly, because David was looking hurt and I hated to see him embarrassed. "I've already read five novels, all of which being over four hundred pages long."

All right, so I was exaggerating just a little bit. In all honesty, the longest 'novel' I'd read all summer was Sports Illustrated—but I wasn't about to admit that in front of the love of my life. Besides, David was looking at me with an expression of extreme gratitude on my face. I felt smart, for once.

At least, I think he was looking at me with gratitude. I wasn't exactly sure.

Race poked me. "I had no idea you knew how to read, Cowboy!" he said in mock astonishment. I threw my hat at him.

We reached Anchorage after what seemed like a millennium, and the seven of us all stood up to gather up our things. Bumlets nearly went mad running around the bus and demanding to know if anyone had seen his shirt, until Swifty admitted that he had thrown it out the window because he liked Bumlets better shirtless. Bumlets yelled and looked desperately out the window as if his shirt would be lying there waiting for him, and when it wasn't he was determined to make the bus driver turn the entire bus around. Halfway down the aisle, however, he seemed to decide that Swifty's mouth was much more interesting, and he sort of forgot about his shirt.

"Honestly, boys, have some DECENCY!" Racetrack called, rolling his eyes as he pulled on his sweatshirt.

David turned to me, a smile turning up the corner of his mouth. He flicked his hair out of his eyes. "Have you really read five novels this summer?" he asked, and it suddenly struck me how very close we were. Ohh shit.

"Um...well..."

"You haven't." He grinned, and I ran a hand through my hair and looked away. "Well it doesn't matter," he laughed, "and I'm not mad at you for not knowing who Jules Verne or Victor Hugo were that time last week."

"I did know! I just...forgot."

And then to my utter surprise, David, instead of shrugging or walking off or making a joke at my expense that nobody would get anyway as it hinged on remembrance of some minor character in the earlier work or Molière, just smiled and looked straight at me with his beautiful eyes, and punched me in the arm. Even once I had managed to pick myself up off the ground I was still in too much of a romantic daze to hear what he was saying (David didn't have any real friends until he was about sixteen, and he still hasn't perfected the art of the friendly punch), and only realized that he wanted me to come with him when I realized that everyone else was going into a grocery store across the street from the bus depot.

Once I got in I was amazed to see that Spot, for once in his short life, was acting completely calm while standing in a place of retail, not trying on the packaged underwear, or begging Racetrack to buy him stickers, or making suggestive comments to me about the alternative uses of a zester. In the months that I had been with him I had always thought that nothing could be worse, but now I realized, all to late, that there was something: he and Droggo were standing with their arms around each other, singing "Tonight" at the top of their lungs, right in the middle of the frozen food aisle.

"Oooooonly yoooouuuuu, you're the only one I see, foreveeeeer," Spot warbled (he was a perfect soprano, and sounded almost alarmingly like Carol Lawrence).

"And there's nothing for me but Spot Conlon, every sight that I see is Spot Conloooooon!"

"Droggo, Droggo…"

Over in the fresh produce section, Racetrack was standing next to our shopping cart, a five-month-old orange clenched in his fist. He was glaring at Spot and Droggo hatefully, undoubtedly thinking that anyone but him playing Tony was a travesty to the musical theater tradition—deep down inside, he was never happier than when he was up on stage, singing about how tough the Jets were and then pirouetting across the street. I could tell he was aching to sing. And finally, he got his chance: Droggo reached over and took a frozen burrito off the shelves, biting into it wrapper and all, and leaving just long enough a silence for Racetrack to jump up onto the zucchini display, close his eyes, throw his shoulders back, and belt for all he was worth:

"TODAAAAAAYYYYY, THE WORLD WAS JUST AN ADDRESS, A PLACE FOR ME TO LIVE IN, NO BETER THAN ALL RIIIIIIGGGGHHHHHT! BUT HEEEEERE YOU ARE, AND WHAT WAS JUST A WORLD IS A STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR--TONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!"

Even though Spot was glaring at Race like he was about to rip his throat out, he couldn't stop the rest of the grocery store from giving a standing ovation, or the bag boys from breaking into an inspired impromptu rendition of "Gee, Officer Krupke!" that was possibly even better than the one in the movie.

"Have you guys been practicing every week, or something?" Spot asked one of them irritably as he unloaded our groceries onto the conveyer belt.

"Twice a week, actually," he admitted, tossing a lock of Pantene-blond hair out of his eye. Grinning, he stuck a hand out to shake with Spot, who suddenly became very interested in a display of double bubble. Shrugging, the blond boy turned to Racetrack and introduced himself.

"Kid Blink. Anchorage Central High drama club—I'm playing Action. Hey, you know, we could use a good Tony. Ours has mono, and you were fantastic."

At which point Race blushed like a cooked lobster and muttered something about how he really didn't like singing at all and had only gotten the part because his girlfriend had been playing Graziella and wanted him to come with her to the auditions.

"Oh," Kid Blink said, his smile having fallen a little bit at the mention of the word _girlfriend. _"So…did that relationship work out?"

"Well, sure," Bumlets said, leaning in to put a bag of avocados onto the belt ("dancers need all the protein they can get!"). "At least until she caught him in the stagecraft workshop with Anybodys. Then it was over pretty fast. One of Race's longest relationships, actually—how long did that one last, three weeks?"

"Four," Racetrack said defensively.

"Really," Swifty said candidly to Kid Blink, "you wouldn't want him. He's such a commitment-phobe"—at which point Blink did his own fairly impressive lobster impression, and rung our groceries up in what was probably record time.

Spot and Droggo were rather grouchy as we climbed back onto the bus, probably irritated at Racetrack because he had stolen the spotlight from them. (A seventy-year-old woman had approached Spot and complemented his vibrato, but he had informed her kindly that, "Sorry, I like men", before continuing on with Droggo.) Swifty was trying to arrange Bumlets' hair so that he had a West Side Story hairdo, and Dave was reading and walking at the same time. Ohh, the talents that boy had...

Race, I realized after a moment, was nowhere to be seen.

I nudged David in the shoulder and he looked up. I tried not to notice that he was reading a Jules Verne book. "Um... Where's Race?" I asked, glancing back over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't there.

Dave's eyebrows lifted slightly and he looked around the bus, but Racetrack, it seemed, had vanished from the face of the earth. "I should probably go check back in the store," he said, starting to get up.

"Nah, I'll do it," I said quickly.

What an act of justice! Putting myself on the line for the man I love! I straightened up proudly and marched off the bus, and I was pretty sure Dave sighed with relief. Because who wants to go back into a grocery store full of singing teenage boys, anyway? Boys who sing out of their own free will give me the heebie-jeebies.

"Excuse me, ma'am," I said, approaching an old woman with what I hoped was a kind smile on my face. "You haven't seen my friend, have you? Short, dark-haired, lots of singing?"

The old woman blinked up at me. "Your friend?" she asked, working her gums. "Oh, the one that likes men and Sasquatch?"

I paused. "Um... no, wrong friend. Thank you anyway."

One of the bag boys looked up. "Oh, that Tony kid? He went out back, I think," he said.

"Okay, thanks," I said, smiling at him, and I crossed the store wondering why the hell Race had decided to exit the building that way. "If I miss the bus, I'm going to be very upset," I muttered, and I cracked my knuckles and pushed open the door.

The site that greeted me was enough to almost knock me over out of sheer surprise, but I managed to grab the doorframe before I crashed into that same old lady who was now wandering around looking for her false teeth. ("Oh, here they are! I hadn't noticed they'd stayed in that watermelon when I bit it...") Race and that bag boy Kid Blink were leaning against the wall together, kissing so passionately that they put Bumlets and Swifty to shame. As I watched, Kid Blink reached up to pull off Race's shirt, and I leaped back and closed the door as quickly as I could, completely forgetting to be quiet.

The sound of the door slamming seemed to echo throughout the entire store. I froze, squeezing my eyes shut and praying that I would live through this experience to see Dave again.

The door opened slowly, and the world froze. Don't kill me don't kill me don't kill me don't kill me don't kill me...

"Uh... Jack? What're you doin'?"

I opened one eye and found myself almost face-to-face with Race (I could never really be face-to-face with him because he was eleven inches shorter than me), and, to my immense surprise, he was grinning. Kid Blink was behind him doing that lobster impression again, and his hair was kind of tousled.

I turned pink. "Um... What?"

"You look completely constipated, dude. Are you okay?"

"I AM NOT CONSTIPATED!" I yelled irritably.

"That's good, dear," said the little old lady, hobbling past me again to go pay for her groceries.

I had almost started to cry by that point, and Race just laughed and smacked me lightly on the arm. "Jack, I need you to tell the others somethin', mm'kay?" he asked me. "I ain't comin' on the bus back with you guys. I was thinkin' of stayin' in Anchorage for a little while to—"

"YOU CAN'T GET MARRIED, RACE! YOU'RE TOO YOUNG!" I gasped.

"No, we're—"

"IS IT EVEN LEGAL IN ALASKA?"

"JACK!" Race smacked me again, a little harder this time. "We're not getting married, so stop being such a dick. I'm stayin' in Anchorage for a little to help the theater production out. Their Tony has mono, and since I know the songs and everythin'..."

I coughed. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"Dave's gonna freak out. He hates spontaneous plans."

"Dave hates spontaneous anything. Screw Dave."

"I will! — I mean—" My eyes widened, I coughed again, and then I turned and sprinted in the other direction. "SEE YOU LATER, GUYS! SEND SPOT POSTCARDS OR HE'LL CRY!"

"See ya, Cowboy!" Race called after me, laughing through his words.

Blink smiled at the other boy after I had left. "Man, I knew he liked that David guy. He gave off the strongest crushing-on-another-boy vibes I've ever seen."

"Amen," said Race with a grin.

I knew that if Spot found out about Race and Kid Blink, he would probably whine nonstop about how any gay guy—and probably any straight guy—in that store should have gravitated straight to him, and Blink was a fool for picking Race instead. Then Droggo would probably get jealous, and although I didn't really know a lot about what Sasquatches were like when they were angry, his claws were big enough that I didn't want to find out. So, instead of telling the truth, I opted for the easiest lie: I said that Race had stayed in town to do some studying at Anchorage's Prussian Doily Museum, which was, I added, considered to be among the best in the nation. I didn't really need to worry, though: Spot and Droggo were busy singing "Light My Candle" and couldn't hear a thing, and Swifty and Bumlets, as usual, were completely absorbed in sticking their hands down each other's pants. Of all the people on the bus, I think David was the only one who actually heard me.

"Jack," he asked me seriously, as I walked over to sit down next to him, "what would you do if you had a hammer?"

"I'd hammer in the morning and I'd hammer in the evening, all over this land. I'd hammer out danger, I'd hammer out warning, and I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land," I replied truthfully.

David just smiled a beautiful, uncontained kind of smile, looking down at the stack of books in his lap. "That's exactly what I'd hoped you'd say," he said quietly.

"Why?"

"Well," he said, "when I became of age, my mother called me to her side; she said, 'son, you're growing up now, pretty soon you'll take a bride (or whatever gender of life partner may be dictated by your sexual preference),' and then she said, 'just because you've become a young man now, there's still some things that you don't understand now. Before you ask some girl (or boy) for her (or his) hand now, keep your freedom for as long as you can now.' My mother told me, 'you better make sure your potential life partner knows the lyrics to every Peter, Paul and Mary song ever recorded.'"

I was so overcome with joy that I didn't even have enough sense to ask why his mother had set such strange guidelines. Or why, for that matter, David seemed to have once lived in a Smokey Robinson song. All I could do was smile, as I debated whether to start laughing or crying--and then, overcome by emotion, I began to sing. My voice was cracking, and I was almost completely drowned out by Spot and Droggo, but David heard, and that was all that mattered.

"Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea…and frolicked in the autumn mist, in a land called Honalee…"

"Don't worry, Jack," David said, noticing the tears that were streaming down my face, "that song always makes me cry too."

And at that point there was no reply better than leaning in and kissing him on the mouth, so warm and deep that I thought I might never resurface. The engine was roaring beneath us, the musky scent of the amazing Canadian Sasquatch had pervaded the bus, and the sound of a horny Brooklynite singing "I'm Just a Girl Who Cain't Say No" drowned out the birdsong and violins that I knew should have accompanied the moment. It was as if every fantasy I had ever had was coming to life, right here on this rickety Greyhound bus in central Alaska.

"How did you know I was in love with you?" I said at last.

David grinned. "You talk in your sleep, Jack."

"Oh."

At that point, Bumlets removed his hands from Swifty's blue jeans and sat down happily beside me, propping his feet up next to Dave. "I saw that," he said.

I blanched. "Saw what?" I asked nonchalantly. Dave lifted his textbook to cover his face, which was bright red, apparently unaware that his book was upside-down. I coughed for what seemed to be the fiftieth time this afternoon; I was beginning to think I was developing asthma.

"You know..." Bumlets nudged me and started making out with the back of his hand.

"That thing was down my PANTS, dude!" said Swifty in horror.

Bumlets stopped. "Oh yeah."

"Budge up, will ya?" Spot demanded, shoving Swifty further into the seat and propping his Leonardo DeCaprio binder open on his knees. "Swifty, honey, you never chose your favorite Leo picture. Please do so now."

"HONEY!"

And so, as the train moved farther and farther from Anchorage, Swifty was forced to select his favorite half-naked picture while David reached over and grabbed my hand, the tips of his fingers stained silver from the graphite of his mechanical pencil. I was in absolute euphoria--it was like an LSD trip with butterflies and angels and boxer shorts flying about. And I found myself thinking that Alaska wasn't that bad after all... Maybe we could come back next year.

Then again, of course...

Man, I may end up with poison ivy in_ very_ awkward places. Hmm. Perhaps Puerto Rico would be a better choice.

FIN

DAKKI: AND NOW, as a present to ALL of our loyal readers, Dalton and Knox have made each and every one of you **dessert.**

And SO…

**SAPPHY **(Sappherella, Sapphykins, and Sweet Sapphola) gets a **vanilla cake **with **strawberry filling **and a candle shaped like **Vinnie**** Delpino**

**DREAMER **gets a **yellow cake **with **psychedelic purple frosting **and the assorted **quotes of Charlie Dalton written in green**

**BRAIDS **gets a **rainbow cake **with **fish-shaped sprinkles**

**MADISON SQUARE**gets a **lemon-lime cheesecake **with a **graham cracker crust**

**ERIN GO BRAGH **gets an **angel's food cake **with **fresh strawberries and whipped cream**

**LUTE **gets a **devil's food cake **with **German** **chocolate icing **and a candle shaped like **DeWitt Talmadge Caspary III**

**SILK-N'-STEEL **gets a **carrot cake **with **cream cheese frosting**

**UNINVISIBLE **gets a **blackberry pie **and a gallon of **vanilla bean ice cream**

**Aelia**** O'Hession **gets **a banana cream pie**

and **SINGIN'-NEWSIES-GOIL **gets **a pan of snowman-shaped meringues.**

SATURDAY: And most importantly, thank you, and never try this at home.

The **GENII **shall return this summer.

Until then…

**TE ADORO TO YOU ALL!**

DALTON: And please review!


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